The Scientist and His Fish
by LoweFantasy
Summary: Kazuya Shibuya only meant to debunk the myth of mermaids, not fall in love with one or get dragged into some freak underground lab that tortured mermaids for their tears. And all Mai wants is a home for freaks who turn into mermaids when wet, not an arrogant, ridiculously handsome narcissist who unintentionally dragged her into this mess. Guess we can't all have what we want.
1. Prologue

**Dedicated to Fairytail-cedes, my loyal, wonderful reader, unless she says otherwise.**

The Scientist and His Fish

by LoweFantasy

Prologue

" _I must be a mermaid, Rango. I have no fear of depths and a great fear of shallow living."_

― _Anaïs Nin_

Even though she could breathe and move about the water as good as any fish, the vast open sea before her returned to her the childish fear of the deep end of the pool. Past her little shelf of land, she wouldn't be able to see the bottom, and at the same time, she was afraid of seeing just how far down it went.

Depth. Far down to the depths, where who knew what waited.

The copper scaled mermaid shivered and watched bubbles rise as she took a deep breath and felt the cool water rush past the gills on her sides. Those had been the most painful to grow, and even now she refused to look down in fear of seeing the fleshy slits open and close with each breath. Even now, it was all too surreal to her.

Despite it being night, the silver moon lit up the water ahead of her until the water grew too murky to see.

"Okay," she said, hoping to distract herself with how weirdly clear her voice sounded under water. "You're a freaking mermaid now, this should be your natural habitat. Besides, it's not like you have to go all the way out there, right?"

The quiet murmur of the ocean currents pressed in on her eardrums in answer. She clenched the strings of her sportsnet bag, where the bare, waterproof essentials floated about.

Who the hell was she kidding? She had no idea where she was going.

But she couldn't stay here much longer. Her parents would be searching for her soon, and if she didn't get going soon, she'd lose whatever courage she had left and just go back.

Taking another deep inhale of salty water, she tipped forward and swam out to the edge of the land shelf. There, she followed it, not daring once to take a peek over the edge.


	2. The Lie of Sea Romance

**Yeah, this is super unorthodox of me. I mean, usually I write horror with Ghost Hunt, and I don't even like to read Ghost Hunt stories that are outside of the suspense genre. Maybe when I'm done with this I'll just switch them over like all the rest of stories and publish it alongside the others. Hmm.**

 **Anyhoo, doing dangerous stuff here. Please don't hate me too much.**

Chapter One

" _Traditions concerning creatures half-human and half-fish in form have existed for thousands of years,and the Babylonian deity Era or Oannes, the Fish-god, is represented on seals and in sculpture, as being in this shape over 2,000 years B.C. He is usually depicted as having a bearded head with a crown and a body like a man, but from the waist downwards, he has the shape of a fish covered with scales and a tail."_

 _-C.J.S. Thompson, former curator at the Royal College of Surgeons of England_

Kazuya Shibuya considered himself to be incredibly patient, especially given his youth, thank you very much. But then, he rarely considered his youth as a factor in any of his behavior or choices. Afterall, what other eighteen year old had a Ph'd, a modest fortune, and a name many in the scientific world had come to respect?

But hunched over in the coolest corner of the tiny, old yacht, his patience had come to its end.

"I thought you said you'd prepared for any repairs that might be needed on this ship?"

The captain, who had to be at least twenty years his senior with a weathered brown face that showed it, kept his eyes on Kazuya's shoes, as though meeting his employers eyes might burn him.

"I did, it's just with a piston blown, I'm going to have to rebuild the entire engine-"

"Then you weren't prepared, otherwise you'd have a spare piston, even a spare engine."

"With all due respect, sir, it's not the wisest thing in the world to store a multi-thousand dollar yacht engine on the yacht itself, exposed to the elements."

The young scientist pinched the bridge of his nose. There was a reason he hadn't studied anything in the ocean up until now. At least on land, when all else failed, you could walk. God forbid he should try to swim, though. Water was, after all, the greatest killer of mankind.

"Fine. When will it be fixed?"

"In a few days."

"I need a number, Charles."

"Two."

"And how close are we to our coordinates?"

The captain's face scrunched up a bit, twitched, and then fell back into the flat penitence that looked so odd for a man his age to give to another so young. But, well, Kazuya was use to it.

"A few days out. We are relatively close to land, though. I've already got a hold of the coast guard to come pick us up."

Good, so he could actually get off this damn, rocking water trap. "And they'll be here...?"

"They didn't say. But it should be this evening, at the latest."

Given that it was noon, and the festering hot of the sun burning down and up from its million watt reflection off the water, this wasn't the news Kazuya wanted to hear. Snapping the book shut that had been forgotten in his other hand, the young scientist thanked the captain curtly for his work, then dug himself, if possible, even deeper into his dark little corner of his cabin. Even with only a little circle of glass to connect him to that heated world of sunlit mirrors, the heat just wouldn't leave. It was like it had nowhere to go other than in there, to Kazuya.

"It would be cooler outside."

Lin, his tall, dark, and taciturn assistant, had also hidden himself in the corner, but with a laptop, where he was transcribing paper after paper of Kazuya's tightly spaced handwriting. Through the whole conversation with the captain he had been silent, which was his way. Even to his employer he rarely spoke a word, unless necessary. Also, per usual, he showed an uncanny ability to guess whatever was on Kazuya's mind. Perhaps it was an unavoidable result of having to transcribe all his handwritten essays, books, notes, and letters (Kazuya had a thing with writing all his ideas with a pen—helped his flow of thinking).

Kazuya just kicked back his chair. "Probably, but then I'd have to be around all those blue-collared idiots making poorly hidden jabs at my age."

"Perhaps if you sit around long enough, they'll start telling sailor tales." Which, as Lin correctly guessed, would be helpful to Kazuya's current subject of study.

"More like tales of how I could be their grandchild." But despite his reluctance, the logic couldn't be denied. Still, it just seemed so useless to be up there in all the blasted sun and sea spray. Where was the romance to the ocean he was promised? Didn't they name the smell of shampoos and perfumes after this briney, fishy, seaweed reeking breeze? What about the refreshing spray of salty, icy, filthy ocean water? And why didn't anyone tell him the sun would be out every freaking day? What about all those terrible sea-storms that filled the sky with clouds like sea monsters? Typhoons? Hurricanes? Cyclones?

Of course, humanity and their love for the dramatic and the imaginative. He should know. He studied where that very line of imagination ended and reality begun.

But even if it would be cooler up on deck, he couldn't stand the idea of being up there with nothing to do. He was paying real money for this trip, and every day was one less day to find the truth.

"Lin, where exactly are we?"

The sound of typing gave way to the clicks of a mouse.

"Just off the coast of Corpus Christi, Texas."

"We're still in the States?" Kazuya let out a loud groan before running his hands through his dark hair. "At this rate, by the time we reach Guatemala, the fishing festival will be over."

"Maybe starting up again," said Lin in his quiet sarcasm.

Kazuya was not amused. He paced around for a good while, pulled out his trunk of supplies to make a check of them just because, and then ran his hands along each of the tubs that held nets and various other supplies, taking note of their purposes that would, most likely, never come to pass. He was just playing with the idea of checking the tech room on the second floor, where all the radars and infrared sensors were, when one of his nails caught on the edge of a net. Wrinkling his nose, he tugged at it till it partially spilled across the floor and his finger bled. Lin watched with a disapproving frown that asked why Kazuya had decided to be an idiot just then.

But the young man still had his hand on the net. What the hell. They were in the ocean, weren't they?

"I'm going to take this out," he said, tugging the dark green, microfiber mess. "Who knows, maybe I'll catch some crab for dinner—or a mermaid."

He laughed dryly at that. Though the net was designed to catch something of that size, it had been, like most of his equipment, brought on more of a 'just in the far away case,' rather than an actual needed reason.

For Kazuya Shibuya was no ordinary scientist. The young man led his field in the study of the paranormal, supernatural, extraordinary, and the psychology and sociology that birthed them.

As the young man tugged the tote full of net out and heaved it up the stairs, the mad pitter-patter of his assistant's typing started up again, and Kazuya prepared himself for the onslaught of the sun outside.


	3. McDonalds Isn't Underwater

**It's short, but I'm half way through the third chapter already. ^.^ I'm glad you guys aren't hunting me down for writing something so AU. And Fairytail-cedes says she likes it! So here it will stay and we shall continue!**

 **And, if you have the time, please tell me what you think of this random story of mine.**

Chapter Two

" _I am a siren, and for my adoration of mankind, have been caught in fishing nets one time too many. And in those fishing nets I have learned too many unfavorable things about human intentions and the lack of trust and goodwill; I'm not going to allow myself to be caught, anymore. Sirens do well at singing the sirens' song and dragging vile people to their deaths, and for good reason!"_

― _C. JoyBell C._

She slept on the ocean floor for the first time in her life. Though the sand was comfortable enough, and being a mermaid somehow made the ocean water feel warmer, she slept fitfully. Every sound outside of the hush of waves jerked her awake with thoughts of sharks, poisonous manta rays, or who knew what else. Just because she had turned into some mermaid didn't mean she suddenly had a special knowledge of what lived in the ocean. Just to be sure, though, she kept only a foot or two of water above her and allowed the low tide to pull her out as the dawn drew near. Even after sunlight came, she dozed on, somehow finding some peace in the turquoise, sunlit water that the night hadn't given.

She finally gave up on getting any more rest when she could no longer ignore the ache in her stomach. The last time she had eaten a good full meal had been at lunch the day before, which didn't help her exhaustion and anxiety at all.

There was no use helping it. She'd have to find a place to dry off to go on land for some food. Hopefully, her parents wouldn't have noticed the old credit card she had picked off of them, and further yet, hopefully credit cards didn't get ruined by ocean water.

Brushing her hands over the ocean floor as she went, she pushed herself forward. The speed which her long, powerful tail gave her still made her a bit breathless with excitement, even after traveling for hours that way. It sent her zooming past more than a few schools of silver fish, which bolted the moment they saw her. A few crabs had been seen scuttling around, but since they reminded her of spiders, she left them well alone, and they left her alone. But though she had gone miles, it seemed like, she hadn't seen much more than sand. She wondered if the majority of sea life waited off the shelf of land she had yet to find the bravery to reach.

After swimming a bit, she surfaced, careful to check for signs of boats or docks. What she saw made her stomach drop. Ocean. The beach itself was far to the west, and she realized a second later that it wasn't even the main continent itself, but the shelf of land that hugged Texas's bay. She hadn't realized she had gone so far out to sea by following the cliff-edge.

At the distance, her stomach gave an ugly grumble. She wrapped her arms around her waist.

"Why didn't I think to pack some canned food?"

Because the credit card plan had seemed good enough.

"Damn it." Well, she might as well get going. Couldn't starve now. Some mermaid she was turning out to be. Couldn't even figure out how to find food in this stupid endless bowl of water. How was she even suppose to find other mermaids—or, er, merpeople? They did exist, right? She existed.

Not wanting to go down that train of thought (again), she ducked down into the water and started out once more. Since the depth of the water made seeing into the distance difficult, she had to pop up every now and then to keep the Northside edge of the shelf in sight. Somewhere around the time the sun reached its zenith and she had halved the distance, a small, off-white yacht of some sorts came into view, still and quiet in the water. Annoyed, she made sure of the distance, and ducked down for good, mumbling about stupid reach people who couldn't just stay to going on cruises. Probably on their way to the Bahamas or something.

Her stomach squeezed tight, slowing her as the rest of her muscles cramped along with it. Swimming took a lot more of her torso muscles than she had previously believed, and they already protested plenty from the crappy night sleep on an ocean floor.

Thus, when she finally saw the floating lines of thin ropes, she was too food-deprived to care about swimming around it. She could see the hunk of raw fish on the bottom and the half a dozen or so crabs that had already congregated to it and knew well enough that the chances of them lifting up the net just as she swam over was slim to none. Not to mention she was human—ish, and wasn't stupid enough to get caught in something so arcane. She swam through without a thought.

A tug on her shoulder yanked her back painfully. Her yelp flew up in a stream of bubbles.

"What the..." The sportsnet bag had somehow twisted around one of the many ropes holding apart the net. Groaning, she went about untying it. Couldn't leave her means to food behind after all.

It wasn't till she had undone the first string that she noticed the squares of rising green lines. Her food and sleep deprived mind just stared at it blankly, still not registering the threat. The crabs had gone wild and scuttled up the walls of rope like poorly trained rock climbers.

Then the dead fish head squashed against her scaled behind and the net scooped up her tail at an awkward angle. A rope pressed in hard against one of her sides, shutting the gil and knocking the breath from her.

 _What...?_

Panic clicked in. Adrenalin pumped in like hot-wired needles. Water turned to white foam about her as she flailed, completely forgetting about the tiny, tungsten pocket knife in her bag. All her attention was on that small opening at the top that grew brighter and brighter with the nearing surface.

 _You have got to be kidding me!_

Her last protection peeled away in a rush of cold air. Crabs caught to her fins, dead fish smeared over her arms. She grasped tight to the net, clawing her way up to the opening. In her desperation, she didn't even bother taking in the yacht or her captors.

She had just gotten her arms into the opening and thought she tasted freedom when it all fell away and the hard, too-hot floor slapped her in the back with a crunch of unfortunate crabs. Her vision burst with stars as her head slammed against it.

And through the stars, she just made out wide blue eyes staring down at her, framed by wind-tossed black hair.


	4. English? You're Still a Freak

**Well, peeps, with this chapter I'm going back to my update once a week. You can expect at least one update by every Wednesday. It's a thing I do, since I hate stories that never end, so I figured my readers do too. Doesn't it suck when someone doesn't update for months at a time? Don't have to worry about that here!**

 **So enjoy! And please, let me know what you think. ^.^**

Chapter Three

" _Sirenomelia, alternatively known as Mermaid Syndrome, is a very rare congenital deformity in which the legs are fused together, giving them the appearance of a mermaid's tail."_

-Wikipedia

Kazuya gawked at the mess of crab, net, copper scales, and pale skin at his feet, unaware of the shocked profanities of the fellow crewmen around him. The girl was nothing of what he expected, and everything that he had dreamed. Short brown hair splayed about her face in wet, messy strings, and the bra she wore wasn't made out of seashells, but a normal bikini top, one that she could have even bought at a local store. Just a hands breath beneath the strings was the red line of fleshy gills that flapped uselessly in the open air.

He didn't have much of an opportunity to take in more than that. He had just taken to admiring the way her scales looked like millions of new pennies in the sunlight before she started to shriek bloody murder.

Everyone on deck jumped. All but Kazuya slapped their hands over their ears as the mermaid continued to scream at the top of her lungs and writhe against the net. Her large, powerful tail thudded on the deck and sent pieces of loose machinery and buckets flying. The captain didn't step away fast enough before getting a face full of half-crunched blue crab.

But Kazuya wanted to hear it—this could be the first living record of the shriek of a live mermaid. He felt dazed, dream-like, and it must have really gotten to his head for he thought he could hear words in between screams that could have been English.

"Someone shut her up!"

The first mate, a huge bear of a man, crashed down on the girl's tail just as another man slapped his hand over her mouth. He jumped back when she bit him, just to be replaced by the captain stuffing a wad of his jacket in her mouth.

Ears ringing, Kazuya sprinted through the door nearest to him, crashing into a wall as he made his way to his cabin and supplies as quick as he could. Lin met him halfway, looking frazzled. Before he could ask what all the commotion had been about, Kazuya told him to ready the tank and pushed past.

His hands shook as he opened tub after tub, pulling out ropes and slinging a camera around his neck. Never, in all his studies—he could hardly think it. The words would make the excitement suffocating.

It took longer than he wanted to immobilize her enough to move her. Hyperaware of her gills uselessly flapping at her sides, he prayed the stress of being in the air wouldn't put any permanent damage on this priceless specimen. Each touch of her cool wet skin and her scaled tail made her oll the more real. He couldn't get the men to move quick enough, and didn't really breathe until they had cut the robes and let her fall into the giant tank which sat in the middle of what once had been a ballroom on the yacht. Before she had even hit the bottom, he had his hands on the senors, checking quickly to make sure the water inside differed as little as possible from the ocean she had just left.

"Don't stand there like idiots, put the lid on!"

Sweaty, and just as feverish with excitement as him, all three crewmen scrambled to get the monstrous lid atop the tank. The mermaid looked as though still gathering her bearings, with her eyes clenched tight and her arms wrapped tightly about her head.

"It's too warm. Lin, get some ice."

Lin ran off.

"Captain, radio the coast guard. Tell them nevermind, we have beds and food enough on this ship."

"Yessir."

"You, on that table over there should be a notebook and some measuring tape. Get that. And you, get me the time of capture and the coordinates exactly—not a single digit off, you hear?"

They scrambled. After the first mate had handed Kazuya his notebook, he sent him off to fetch ice with Lin. All the while, he kept one eye on the mermaid curled within. His heart hammered as though to break forth from his chest, but he couldn't shake the mad smile on his face. He barely had the mind to remember to lock the top of the tank as Lin and the men dumped in shoebox after shoebox of ice through the air openings in the lid.

"Stop, that should be good enough. Now all of you but Lin leave, you can gawk at her later. I need quiet."

When they hesitated like a group of school boys asked to leave the scene of a murder, he settled one of the blood freezing glares he was so proud of on them.

They closed the door behind them, plunging the ballroom into shadowy dimness. A lone, tiny window near the front of the ballroom let sunlight in a single, golden column, but Naru ignored that as he went around to turn on the lights of the tank, which soon filled the darkness of the room with green luminescence.

The mermaid had yet to move. Her hair fluttered in the little movement of the water about her. For a brief, terrifying moment, he thought the shock had been too great for her. What if he had killed her? Made her irreparably sick? After all, there had never been a recorded capture of a mermaid like this before. What if they all died after capture?

Just to be sure, he checked the sensors. The temperature of the tank had dropped, but not enough. It would take time. His hand shook too much to keep taking notes. He snapped his notebook close and handed it to his assistant.

"Pick up on notes for me."

The tall man nodded, expression long with solemnity, but his dark eyes bright with the same excitement Kazuya felt.

When the mermaid remained curled up on the bottom of the tank, Kazuya had to shove down the urge to stick a pole in to poke her, just to see if she was still alive. So, to distract himself, he crouched down to take in what he couldn't as she thrashed about on the deck. Gills on the sides, that was unprecedented. The copper tail might match the highlights of her hair once it was dry. And despite the bronze fins poking out the sides of each of her forearms, and the dorsal fin half-way down her tail, her skin was no different from the average human. It wasn't even tanned, just pale, even ghostly in the greenish light of the tank.

The fin at the end of her tail, however, gave him the urge to pick up his notebook once more and start sketching. Rather than the usual ocean going fin, the scales merged into something akin to ones of those flourishing goldfish tails, giving the appearance or layers of skirt billowing out from the end of her tail. His imagination played with the idea of tiny, human feet hidden amongst the folds of gossamer fin. If he hadn't seen hair or tail of any other human life in the ocean beforehand, he'd even begin to think this girl was an eccentric human and not a mermaid...

His breath caught. What if she was fake? What if the gills were just for show and she had somehow had an oxygen supply down below-

He launched himself at the locks. Lin jumped at his laptop.

"Kazuya?"

Just then, the captain came in.

"Sir, this was found in the net."

The momentary break to take a look at what appeared to be an ordinary bag of mesh, the kind generally used to hold water bottles and not much else, helped bring his senses back to him. Why would she have been so furious at being caught if she weren't the real deal? How could he have felt the very muscles and flesh beneath the scaled skin of her tale if fake? And why come all the way out here, where there weren't even any coral reefs to explore? And if she were desperate for air, why curl up on the bottom like that? Kazuya had made sure himself that she had been lowered in as gently as physically possible at the time, so she couldn't have hit her head hard enough to lose consciousness.

Redoing the lock he had undone, he kept his chin down as he took the bag from the captain, who had all his attention on the glowing tank in the room.

"By golly..."

"You're excused, captain."

"Surely it wouldn't be such a hassle—can't I at least take some pictures? For home?"

Kazuya sharpened. "You most absolutely cannot! Didn't I have you and your crew sign a contract of privacy before this journey?"

The captain sobered. His wonder vanished from his face. "Of course, sir." He bowed his head and left.

Kazuya was sure to lock the door behind him. Lin still watched him oddly, but his boss ignored him as he returned once more to the sensors on the tank while peeling open the bag. Inside he found several ziplock bags. One, he noted, held a credit card, another a cell phone which had been double protected in several layers of bag, and with its battery separated from it. The rest held basic, small survival tools, such as a pocket knife, matches, and—to the embarrassment of a very small part of him that hadn't forgotten what it meant to be eighteen years old—a rolled up pair of bikini bottoms.

This was the strangest part of all the oddities. What need did a mermaid have of bikini bottoms? If it weren't for the fact they matched the top she wore exactly, he would have shrugged off the whole bag as some possible debris she had picked up somewhere. Not to mention the odd fact that everything inside had been water-proofed so thoroughly.

He took up the credit card to squint at the name. "Jason M. McGomrey..."

"You can keep it if you let me go."

He had never been so startled in his life. Even Lin flinched so bad that he ended up slapping the laptop close on accident.

The tiny, muffled voice came from inside the tank, where Kazuya's mermaid had uncurled and had her palms up to the glass, staring at him imploringly. For a moment he was caught up in how large and expressive her brown eyes were. It was the first time he had really had the chance to see them in the struggle.

When he nor his assistant reacted, she said, "Please," and bit her lip.

He gathered himself the best he could and cleared his throat before saying, hopefully in a loud enough voice to be heard through the thick glass, "You speak English?"

"Yes, and it has a ten thousand dollar limit on it."

"I'm not a criminal."

"I'll take credit for it—please, just let me go."

But that didn't compute in his head. The next thing that struck him was how clear her voice sounded, despite being muffled by water. So odd...maybe if he got a microphone down there...

But wait...

"Take credit?" He blinked, still unable to comprehend. "You're a mermaid, aren't you?" She seemed to be breathing under the water just fine.

"It's my foster dad's, and as far as I know, yeah. Please, just let me go."

"But you are a...mermaid?"

"Yes! Please!"

Never had he expected this. Not only was this specimen the real deal, but it could talk. And to think, the most he had expected of this trip was a few good meals of fire roasted seafood and a sewn together cadavers of dolphin and a human corpses.

He was finding it hard to breathe. If it weren't for his exceptionally trained logical mind, he'd probably have fainted. Rather, he just nodded, and took up his notebook to make note of the situation and lists of the tests he wanted to run next. All the while, the credit card rested where he had left it on top of the rest of her wet belongings.

His attempts to ignore her pleas ended when she gave a soft whimper.

"Oh god, please, why did you put me in here? Do you work for some marine biologist? Oh god, what's going to happen to me? You're not going to send me to some aquarium or cut me apart to look at all my organs or-"

"Would you please shut up? Your whining is making it hard to think."

"Think? You—you bastard, I'm stuck in a tank like some—some oversized fish! And I'm not stupid enough to think you're just going to let me float in here for the rest of my life without..." She paused. "You're not going to keep me in here, are you?"

"For the time it takes to run some tests-"

" _Tests!?"_

"Mostly blood samples and X-rays."

"Yeah right! I have rights you know, I could sue you for-"

He cut her off, "How do you know English?" At her silence, he looked up from his notebook to see her floating somewhere off in the middle of the tank, her hands to her mouth. As he met her eye, she scrunched her arms in front of her orange and pink flower clad breasts and floated back to the wall.

"I've always known English. It's the only language I know."

"Is this what is commonly spoken amongst merpeople of your kind?"

She blinked at him. "I don't know."

"What do you mean you don't know?"

For the first time, a bit of irritation flashed across her face. She frowned.

"What it sounds like, dumbass, _I don't know_. I've never met a mer-whatever before, and if you just let me out of here I'll dry up and you'll see what I'm talking about. Just don't report me or turn me into some freak science specimen, this is exactly why I ran away from home in the first place!"

But, after finishing off his last note, he found his vision starting to dim and spin a bit. After all, even his mind had its limits. Being sure to take a deep breath, he put aside his notebook once more and pushed off from the table he had been resting against.

He needed some air.

"Lin, if you'd watch her."

His assistant nodded. Doing his best to keep his shoulders back, Kazuya made his way to the door.

"Wait! Please! I beg of you!"

Her wails cut off as he closed the door behind him with a snap.

Out in the sun and sea breeze once more, he slid down the wall to a crouch, putting his head between his knees. He must be dreaming. A mermaid? No, but a fish girl who lived on land? Was it possible that merpeople were just shape shifters living among humans? But he had already investigated the myth of shape shifters. It took him one week, max, to prove just how fictional _that_ was. He could confidently say shape shifters weren't real, he had gathered the facts till no one could argue against it, not even himself.

But, then again, he had almost been sure mermaids weren't real either.

Man, he loved his job.


	5. What of Floating Turds?

**Oh! Guys! I just got this idea I want to hear your thoughts on. I've been reading a lot of manga of late that I wish had more fanfiction for, because when I look it up there's not only very little, but very poorly written stories about them. I was thinking that, something I could do, is I could take requests from my readers to write fanfiction for some of these mangas as a way to get the word around about my real novels that I'm publishing in the real world. ^.^ Since I hate marketing and advertising (the idea of trying to convince someone to buy something sounds way to close to manipulation for me), and you guys get free stories in return, so it sounds like a good idea to me. What do you think?**

 **If my novels are successful, I can quit ghost writing for good! :D No more selling my soul to those who wish to use my stories for stupid get rich quick schemes.**

 **Oh, and here's your weekly update. Hope you enjoy!**

Chapter Four

 _"80% of the ocean undiscovered and you gone tell me #mermaids don't exist."- Twitter user '_ Pawka'

The guy she had been left with didn't even look up at her when she directed her pleas to him. He just sat there like some tall Asian zombie, typing away at who knew what. Feeling her eyes burn and her throat tighten, she finally allowed herself to sink to the bottom of the tank she could just swim a full circle in. Ginormous, yes, if you were a fish. Not a human being.

If that what she was, anyways.

As her stomach cramped for food, more uncomfortable thoughts float up to the surface of her mind: what if she needed to use the bathroom? That had been easy enough swimming along all alone in an ocean (she hadn't looked down to watch how her fish part relieved itself, because that would have been way too weird), but while being under constant supervision? And even if she got a moments peace, didn't that mean she'd be swimming in a tank of her own...and for everyone to see... Just thinking about it made her never want to pee again. Perish the thought if she had to go number two. Maybe, if she didn't eat—her stomach cramped even harder just at the thought—she wouldn't have to. Besides, all she had to do was wait until someone fell asleep or wasn't looking and she could bust out of this stupid tank. Wasn't like it could be that hard, right? What kind of tank was built to keep in a human being, after all—or, rather, someone with the intelligence and mind of a human being?

Man, life was complicated.

Even so, she couldn't think with her stomach aching like this, bathroom issues or not. Besides, if they needed to bring her food, she could get a closer look at just how the top opened and closed. Course, she wouldn't have this problem if she hadn't been freaking out on the bottom when they put the stupid thing up in the first place. And on that thought, why'd she talk? If she had just pretended to be a stupid animal, maybe they would have made it easier for her.

Whatever. Plan A.

She thumped hard on the glass. The Asian guy didn't look up from his laptop. He did adjust his folded legs however with a squeak from his metal chair. That couldn't be comfortable.

"Um, hey, I haven't been able to get food since yesterday morning, is there any chance you could slip me something?"

For the first time, the guy looked up. His narrow eyes held such an intelligent look, that she caught herself second guessing her decision to write him off as the 'scientist in charge.'

"Please? I promise I won't throw a fit. Just some food. You can't have me dying on you, after all."

He sighed. "If you're trying to get out-"

"No, seriously, I'm starving. It's why I was even swimming in this direction. Hoping to hit up a McDonalds or something."

He didn't question that, though the twitch to his left eye gave her the impression that he seemed just as intrigued as the other man that a mermaid would eat hamburgers. But, to her relief, he closed the laptop and got up to leave the room. Her excitement made her stomach cramps, if possible, even worse, and when he returned with what looked like a sandwich on a plate, she backed off eagerly to watch the top of the tank in action.

But he didn't even touch the sides where the black little box locks were. Rather, she heard a click, and a little square opening, the size of a large shoe box, opened up above her. Through the square she could see the rippling image of the man's long face lit up by the green lighting of the tank. At the edge of the tank was a ladder, which she could see the dark shine of his shoes from the third rung up.

Before he did something stupid, like dropped the sandwich into the tank, she hurried up the square and broke through the surface of the water. About a foot of air was left between the top of the tank and the water level.

He watched her warily as she reached up to the box. His eyes said, quite clearly, that any funny business and he'd shove her back in. She didn't doubt it, he had to have at least eighty pounds over her.

"Don't worry, I don't have any super powers or anything." With a helpful beat of her tail, she lifted herself through the little box to lever herself up by her elbows. Already she could tell that her hips, widened by the growth of additional muscles that made up where her body became fish, would have a nigh impossible time fitting through the little box.

She tried blowing on her hands to dry them a bit before reaching out to take up the sandwich. Peanut butter and jelly. She hated peanut butter. But, with a wrinkling of her nose, she shoved it in anyways. Hunger was hunger, after all.

All the while, he watched her from the side of his tank, leaning against his elbows. Occasionally she could catch whiffs of his breath as it blew towards her smelling strongly of cooked cabbage. It made her skin crawl.

"Do you mind?" she asked, glaring pointedly at the small space he kept between them.

He didn't move, however.

When she had finished her sandwich in record time, she was about to duck back down into the tank (just in order to avoid him), when he stopped her with a quiet question of whether she was still hungry. When she said, rather guiltily, that yes, she was, he took the plate and waited for her to slip back down into the tank before latching the little door close and heading back down the ladder.

No sooner had he reached the door when Mr. Handsome-but-Heartless returned, this time with a small quirk to his mouth. That's what had to be what bugged her the most about this guy. Though all his actions from before stated he was excited, he didn't really smile. Not once. And those dark blue eyes of his didn't betray his thoughts, not a single one. It was like he was a robot.

He couldn't have been much older than her, though, which got her wondering what he was doing on the boat. It was only April, after all. Wouldn't he have school? If he still went to school, that was.

With a squeak of wheels, he dragged over a chair from a desk in the corner to the side of the tank. She held still, doing her best to match the same stoniness as him.

Once at the glass, he sat down and propped his feet on the small platform holding up the tank.

"I believe I'm gathered enough now. Ready to answer some questions?"

She could have punched him. "No, but you're going to ask them anyways."

"True." He flipped open to a blank page and readied his pen, those blue eyes to her. "So, Miss talking mermaid, what shall we call you by?"

"Mai. And you must be Johnny Asshole."

He didn't even blink. "No last name?"

"Like I'd give you my last name."

"Why? Because I could trace it back to your family?"

"I already told you, I have foster parents. Any family I have is dead, unless you plan on digging up a bunch of dead people too. Wouldn't put it past your royal arrogance."

Again, not even a twitch. If anything, that little quirk of a smile returned to his mouth. "A little early in our acquaintance to be giving me nicknames, don't you think?"

"Asshole."

He just nodded, and wrote something else down that she couldn't see through the glass. "So, Mai, you say you've been on land before. How is that?"

"Because I'm human. I was born human, raised human, I'm a perfectly ordinary girl, thank you very much."

"Except for the fact you're now in my tank with a goldfish's ass."

"Excuse me, I resent your language!"

His smile widened and he made a 'hmmph' of humorless laughter. "Are you the only one who can say 'ass' then?"

"Only because that's what you are, keeping me in here like the heartless kidnapper you are."

"I didn't kidnap you. You swam into my net. I had only been fishing for the crab you squashed on your arrival. It was your luck that, out of all the crab fishers, you should stumble upon the one who was actually researching mermaids at the time. But, I digress. So you say you are human?"

But she had hardly heard and was staring at this guy. Did he say he was...researching mermaids? Wait wait, if he was the one who—so this tank was prepared for—did he own this boat?

She took a look around the tank once more. Then she had to smile.

"Wait, are you saying you had this tank ready for a mermaid?" When he just continued to sit there, pen poised over his notebook for her answer to his question, she gave a bubbly snort. "You're nutters."

"Says the mermaid."

"Hey! I didn't actually believe in that crap until I started growing scales and gills!"

His expression vanished behind his bangs as he scribbled some more down. "And when did this happen?"

"Last month—wait, is this your dad's tank or something? How'd you get this boat?"

"I bought it and then had the tank installed. How quickly did the change come on?"

But she was squinting out at the surrounding room, hoping to see more past the line where the tank light gave way to shadows, but all she could make out were polished wood floors and that lone window. "So, you're some rich spoiled boy who used his allowance to go mermaid hunting? I've heard of that fettish, but never known anyone who'd actually go through with it."

At last, some real emotion shone on his face when it flashed with irritation and he tapped the corner of his notebook harshly on the tank glass.

"For your information, its part of my career, and for future information, the last time my parents funded anything for me was when I was starting college six years ago. If you'll come back to me-"

"Six years ago?!"

He gave a grunt of annoyance. "Look, you're the one being investigated right now, so if you'll shut up and pay attention, I'd appreciate it."

But almost as though to purposefully aggravate him further, the door flipped open and the tall Asian man came back in, this time with two more sandwiches on the plate. At the food, Mai lost all interest and swam too far from the glass to hear another word the young man said. For a minute, it looked as though he were about to frustrate her dream of food by sending the taller man back, but after he spoke a few words, her interrogator allowed him to head up the ladder once more and open the lid of the tank, which she popped out of the moment it was open.

"Thanks!"

The tall man gave her a sincere, warm smile, then headed back down the ladder. She had just taken her first few bites of her, gratefully, tuna sandwich this time, when the younger man replaced him, his cool mask once more on, but his notebook forgotten.

"Answer my question, Mai, or I'll take those sandwiches."

With a scowl she wrapped her arms around the plate protectively. "Fine! But there isn't much to tell."

And there really wasn't. It had all started, just as she said. She woke up one morning itchy and feverish to find scales growing on her hips. As the days went by, the scales spread, she grew more and more uncomfortable, and more unnerved. Her parents had taken her to the doctor, who had pulled out some crap from his butt about it being a severe case of eczema (since the scales had been red in the beginning), and sent her home with a prescription. But, not only did the prescription make her more sick, but she found out after wards that the only time she was comfortable was when she was taking a bath.

"Foster parents don't much care to have a kid on hand that's sick all the time," she said. "Bad for finances, so, since the baths helped, I just slept in the bath at night and wore long sleeves during the day. It worked pretty good until I woke up one morning with a freaking fish tail."

He frowned. "You just woke up like that? Didn't it hurt?"

"Of course it hurt! Like hell! What do you think having your legs meld together and gills bust out of your sides feels like? Tickles?"

He didn't look the least bit apologetic. "Did your guardians find you then?"

"Nah. I fell out of the tub, too freaked out to scream and grabbed some towels. Then..." she hesitated, trying to gather her thoughts. Changing back always blurred a bit in her memory. "My tail just...fell apart and I had weird, scaley legs again. Sort of doesn't take you long after that to figure out that you turn into a mermaid in the water. Think they had a TV show about that once..."

But Mr. Handsome-but-Heartless broke through her thought. "You said you ran away. Were you discovered?"

She gave him a droll stare. "I'm not an idiot, you know. What do you think two normal people would do if they found out the kid they let into their house turned into a fish freak?" She didn't much like living there anyways, but not like she was going to tell him that.

As he looked off somewhere over her shoulder, obviously deep in thought, she took the chance to inhale the last of her sandwiches. Man, this whole transforming and swimming about stuff really took it out of a person. Before all this she had thought she had quite the normal appetite.

Licking her fingers (three sandwiches just barely filled her), she mused (both to herself and him), "I wonder if I'm some sort of shape shifter or something."

"There's no such thing."

She raised an eyebrow at him. "What, are you some sort of expert or something?"

"As a matter of fact, yes. I am. My last case had been shape shifters. My research proved that the ability to change ones shape so drastically is not physically or chemically possible among endoskeletal creatures, especially those who hold a gestational period of-"

"Alright! Nerd down! I get the idea. You're one of those geniuses. So you're, what, thirty something and just got a baby face?"

But he had already started down the ladder, his attention far from her. It irked her to no end that he had the indecency to kidnap her and nag her ceaselessly, just to turn around without even so much as a thank you, acting as though he hadn't been talking at all.

"What, I don't even get a treat for that?"

But he didn't answer. Just walked off back to where he had left his notebook and pen to allow his tall companion to come up and give her an apologetic smile before gingerly pushing down at her head. With an angry scowl she let him push her back into the tank and click the little door close once more.

"You're not even going to let me out? I told you, I turn back to normal if you—"

"And let you run away before I can even finish my tests?"

He straightened from his crouched position on the floor where he had been writing to give her the same blank, cold stare.

"I would think even you would want to know what you are."

"Then I won't run away! Just let me out of this stupid tank! This isn't humane at all!"

"Sorry," he didn't sound sorry at all, "but I don't think I can trust you just yet."

She gaped at him as he sat down next to his assistant and readied his notebook.

"I have a few more questions for you. And don't worry, in a few days we'll reach the lab where I can finish my tests and you'll be free to head on your way...wherever that was."

In other words, he intended to keep her in this tank for days, who knew how many. Her, a normal girl who just happened to have a problem growing fins. He didn't even wonder about her comfort, bathroom, sleep, or otherwise. He was just going to keep her in there like some exotic pet!

Bastard.


	6. Canned Beans Taste Better with Mermaids

**Getting all the last fine tune things done for the publication of my first book-got the final draft of the cover and it looks SWEET and starting to figure out all the places I'll have to do signings and stuff-and I'm getting real nervous. I don't expect it to go amazing super well, but I don't want it to be a complete flop. : Oh well. I can only do my best, right?**

 **Anyways, enjoy your weekly update! If I can get up to 60 reviews, I'll put up an extra chapter before next Wednesday. That means you'll get next weeks update AND and extra chapter. Two in one week! Fun fun, right?**

Chapter Five

" _The Fiji mermaid (also Feejee mermaid) was an object comprising the torso and head of a juvenile monkey sewn to the back half of a fish. It was a common feature of sideshows, where it was presented as the mummified body of a creature that was supposedly half mammal and half fish, a version of a mermaid." -_ -Steven C Levi, " _Western Folklore"_

Mai the mermaid proved to be unresponsive after that. Either she had backed up enough that she couldn't hear him or she just didn't answer.

That didn't stop him for searching for new things to record and whatever evidence he could find to store away as proof. He talked to her for a bit about allowing him to pull off one of her scales, but she gave him a look so venomous, he didn't know if he dared it without any proper supplies to sedate her, otherwise she might drown him or Lin in the process.

He took a list of the ingredients of what the sandwiches had contained to take record of her diet. He wrote such detail descriptions of her anatomy that his hand ached after he was done. Then he took up his camera and was sure to take pictures from every angle, despite her attempts to wriggle to the farthest corner away from him and hide herself in a ball.

It was then that Lin put a hand on his shoulder.

"That's enough."

Kazuya's knee-jerk reaction was to slap his assistant's hand away. Never before had he captured a live specimen of his mythological studies. How could Lin think that he had taken enough? But then his eyes fell on the mermaid, who visibly trembled in the water. Stream after stream of bubbles floated up from where she had hidden her head beneath her arms.

He lowered his camera.

"They're just pictures."

But neither Lin nor the mermaid responded. Annoyed, he capped his lens and went to gather up his notes.

"Check her locks before you go, will you?"

Lin bowed his head in affirmation.

With that, Kazuya closed the door behind him and stepped out into the last dregs of sunset. The sky had been redone in silver blues underlain with gold, which reflected on the dark waters like molten metal, but compared to the prize of his mermaid, it was nothing to him.

He barely noticed the crew whispering together on their side of the table that night at dinner. The food prepared from boxes and cans tasted better than usual, and he found himself ravenous. Afterwards, he took a long shower, where he imagined underwater cities of coral and crystal where merpeople had built their own society. It would be like the discovery of life on other planets. Mankind all over the world would be introduced to their underwater brethren, and Kazuya Shibuya would be remembered for all time as the man who brought together the uniting of merfolk and landfolk, legend and fact, dreams and reality.

And it all waited for him in that tank.

He could have sung (which was very unlike himself, to the extreme). After showering and downing his evening tea, he didn't bother sleeping, but made a beeline to the ballroom. He passed the rarely seen fourth and fifth crew members: twin brothers, who worked the kitchen and maintenance, and had the worst case of social anxiety he had ever met. Sea spray misted across his skin from a moon painted ocean, and for the first time he thought he could finally comprehend the romance of the ocean.

Then he opened the door-

To find a pale skinned girl with her back to him, wearing nothing more than an orange and pink flower bikini.

She whirled around, her messy short hair catching to her eyelashes. Her hands flew up to her chest.

"Don't throw me back in! I won't run, please!"

But he just stared at her. His eyes went down to the copper scales lining the front of her shins and thighs like a layer of metal plating. The rest of the skin, up to where it ran beneath her bikini bottom and to her hips, was pink and raw looking, as though sunburnt, and her knees shook.

"I won't run..."

Kazuya closed the door behind him. When the snap made her jump, he sighed. "Stop your whining. If there's anything I really hate most in this world, its whining."

Locking the door behind him, he made his way towards her, shoulders back, masking his the tremor in his stomach. He knew so little about her. She could have lied or emitted something that day, so for all he knew, she had a self-defense mechanism that could leave him helpless. After all, merpeople had done so well to keep themselves in legend since the beginning of history. In his excitement, he had acted the fool, he should have brought Lin with him.

But, taking in her pink legs and the way they trembled beneath her, Kazuya found himself softened ever so slightly. He didn't think of himself as the compassionate type. Pity opened you up to be taken advantage of and scammed, both by people and the wiles of nature. Yet standing there, petite, mostly naked, shivering, and with those doe-like eyes wide with fear...

He stopped with only a yard between them. Cocking his head to the side, he leaned a hand on his belt loop and kept his eyes to her face.

He mentally shook himself. What in the world was he thinking?

"Back in the tank."

"No! Can't I at least have a prison with a bathroom?"

He blinked. That hadn't even crossed his mind. And yet, he could only respond with, "This isn't a prison."

"Oh, stop kidding yourself, you're keeping me as your guinea pig. Put chains on me, tie me up, but at least give me a place to sleep and a bathroom. I'll even pee in a cup, if you want me too."

Somehow, urine samples mixed with the crystalline dream of merfolk utopia still floating around in his head crashed into each other, and for the first time in a very long time, Kazuya found himself with his head thrown back in laughter.

What the hell. She was just a girl, after all. What was he so afraid of?

Once he caught his breath, he leveled his gaze at her, the back of his head hurting from the force of his smirk.

"How could I forget. Fine fine, come on. I'll give you a room to sleep in. It's not like you have anywhere else to go since you ran away from home, eh?"

She looked utterly confused, and a tad bit worried. But he could still feel the remains of his humor in his stomach. A girl who could turn into a mermaid, and he had almost forgotten to give her access to a toilet. Urine samples indeed.

As he let her out of the room, he heard her say, in shock disbelief, "You're bipolar, aren't you? Schizo? Just plain mental?"

"Whatever you want. There's got to be something wrong with me. After all, I already have looks and the brain, I can't be perfect."

"You're a narcissist then. Mr. Narcissist."

"The names Kazuya Shibuya, actually."

"Like I care, I've fallen in love with this realization. Narcissist. Naru the narcissist."

A mermaid giving him nicknames? How odd.

As expected, Lin waited at the door for them. As his assistant and, secretly, his hired bodyguard, Lin was never far from reach.

"Lin, I would appreciate it if you led Mai to one of the spare rooms."

Lin bowed.

"Oh, and Mai?"

"What?"

"If you should try to escape, you really will be traveling in the tank." He smiled dryly. "And that cute little door you wiggled out of will be locked and melted shut. No toilet. No sandwiches."

She visibly paled. Then, just as quickly, she turned red.

"You really are an asshole! What kind of guy captures girls and locks them up in a tank?"

"I'd be careful who you're calling an asshole. Lin here knows several types of martial arts and I'm not too picky about where I store my mermaid."

"Fine! Narcissist!"


	7. Hanging Your Privates Over Spiders

**Good luck, homies (and bad luck). My clients hiring me to do another ghost detective story. ^.^ Would you like it? Or shall I turn it down?**

 **Also I'm ordering in some bookmarks of my book. Would anyone like some? ^.^ It's what I'm doing for advertising rather than making stupid little business cards, because honestly, does anyone even use those?**

Chapter Six

" _O train me not, sweet mermaid, with thy note,_

 _To drown me in thy sister's flood of tears!"_

 _\- William Shakespeare, The Comedy of Errors_

The cabin had a bathroom, all right, but not much else. A bed (a mattress on the floor that looked twice her age), and some wires sticking from the wall that suggested there had once been an entertainment center there. The room had a fine layer of dust, and she approached the bathroom cautiously. Just as she suspected, every spare corner had been claimed by one kind of spider or another. She didn't even want to lift up the lid to the toilet, let alone hang her privates into the questionable abyss when she finally had to go.

"It's perfectly usable."

Naru (she hadn't even bothered to commit his name to memory when he had given it to her), stood in all his tall, dark, arrogant handsomeness in the doorway of the room. Even as she turned to consider kneeing him in the crotch and making a run for it, she spotted more spiders hanging out in the corners.

"Couldn't you have bothered to clean this place before heading out?"

"I got the boat on discount, on a tight schedule, so I only had the necessary spaces cleaned out. This is a spare room."

"I'm so honored."

"Hey, there's always the tank. I am extremely curious to see this transformation of yours."

Heat rose up to her face in flames. She couldn't even think of a proper comeback to that.

"Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some papers to attend to. Lots to do. Lin will be at the door, should you need anyone."

And like that, he was gone. Probably for the best, as she had already started stepping forward for the inevitable crotch slam. She didn't have to pull on the doorknob to know that it was lock, as she heard the click and watched as her new guard tried it for himself. Not to mention a particularly fat daddy long-leg had made his home in the curve of the handle.

For a full five minutes, Mai stood there, frozen in the cold, spider infested room, wearing only her bikini. The jerk scientist hadn't even bothered to leave her things with her.

She could have cried. By all regards, she couldn't see how this could get any worse. Not only was she alone and a freak, but she had been captured by a man whose every intention would be to turn her into his lab rat. She'd be plastered on TV as the first mermaid, force to painfully change back and forth naked just for observation, poked, prodded, trapped...

Had it been too much to ask for? To be free?

Shivering, she gingerly sat down on the old mattress and pulled her knees up to her chin. Her cool scales pressed against the back of her forearms.

She should have never left the McGomrey's, even if Jason had been a creep. At the same time, the deep side of the ocean didn't seem as scary anymore compared to the possibly arachnid filled abyss of the toilet.

As the night grew deeper, her hopes that Naru would return with some blankets vanished. While cool ocean water had been no problem, cool air wrecked just as much havoc on her as any normal human girl. She even dared to curl up on the dusty mattress top to conserve heat. When at long last she heard a click and the rumble of what was unmistakably a heater, she jumped up in search of a vent in the darkness. The powdery, cobweb feel of the floor sent chills up her spine, but at long last her toes brushed across warm grating. Teeth chattering, she pressed as much of her body as physically possible to the delicious warmth and laid her tired head against the floor.

"...snotty little rich boy."

Mai frowned. Voices? From below? Well, he had brought her pretty high up.

"Can't wait to see his face. Think we should tell him fairies took her away?"

"No, you idiot, fairies don't take mermaids. You should tell him Poseidon did it. He'd believe that."

A soft murmur of laughter. Mai's blood went cold. Her fingers felt numb against the dusty floor.

"Watch it. Paranormal investigator or not, you should know by now that he's not the type to be fooled by pranks. He lives to rat those out, mind you."

"Or so he says."

Another man chuckled and echoed, "so he says."  
"Nah, I read some of them papers. Kid's sharp."

"Well 'course he's sharp. He got this far, didn't he? But blimey, who'da thought he'd find the real deal."

"A nice looker too. Pity her girls weren't as free as they could be, eh? Wonder if I can sneak in before the boys get here-"

"Don't even think about it, bastard, I don't want you masturbating all over the floor, that's disgusting."

With a shudder she unstuck her ear and sat up to dig her fingers into her shoulders. Her heart pounded a painful, icky rhythm against her collarbone. A cold sweat prickled her brow. She couldn't let them—Naru was bad enough, but being at their mercy had to be worse. At least Naru hadn't blinked an eye at her bikini. Perhaps he was gay. Oh please, let him be gay.

Knees weak, she felt her way towards the thin light from the tiny, musty window of the door and knocked on the glass.

"Guard? Guard guy?"

To her surprise, the door opened, but not to the tall Chinese man she expected.

Her captor blinked at her, a pile of folded blankets in his arms. He got over his shock quickly, however, and grinned.

"Do I get a tip for room service?"

His tall bodyguard stood behind him, leaning against the railing. Behind him she could see the ocean, and not for the first time, it called for her, metallic in the moonlight. But she yanked her gaze back to him and pointed below.

"You've got a mutiny, Captain."

Naru frowned. "Excuse me?"

"I was cold, so I curled up on the floor around the heater and I heard them talking. They're planning on stealing me or something, and I'm telling you this not because I like you, because I wish you'd just drop into a pit of—of lava or something, but..." she gulped. "They sound like perverts."

For a moment, he just looked at her, black eyebrows heavy over his eyes in thought. Then he handed her the blankets, which she took in confusion.

"All men are perverts," he said, unfazed.

She couldn't believe this man. That's what he decides to say after that statement? "Aren't you going to do something?"

"Like what? Leave them to my boat so they can steal it along with all my hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of equipment? No. I'll watch. Should be fun to see a bunch of middle aged do-nothings try to get past Lin."

The body guard in question didn't smile at this. She had to admit he looked rather formidable. And her legs did hurt a lot from the cold, and from the change. The mattress hadn't been too bad either.

"Oh, and I got this," from besides the door he took out a broom with a dustpan clicked onto it. "Your spider weapon."

Her death wish for him grew ever so weaker as she took the broom from him, and even more when he reached passed her to flick on the light switch, asking her if mermaid's liked the dark. She didn't mention that she had been too terrified of reaching her hand into a spider's nest to search the walls for a light switch.

When he turned to leave, she reached out without thinking and grabbed hold of his jacket. He turned to give her a quizzical look. Even with the blue of his eyes hidden by the darkness, his hair fell in such a way across his eyes as to accentuate their handsome shape. She really had never seen such a beautiful boy in person, let alone talk to one. She had never had much trust for guys.

"What?" he asked, in his usual aloof way, though his words said otherwise. "Would you like some clothes too? I can probably lend you a shirt."

What had happened to the heartless jerk who had just let her freeze for hours in the freakiest room on the ship? "Could you, um, stay? Just while I clear out the spiders?"

When he still gave her that quizzical stare, the tall, quiet Lin stepped past him. The room looked even smaller compared to his height. When he reached out his hand for the broom, she obediently gave it up, hot with a little more than shame as the man went to town on the spiderwebs, sending the insects flying.

Naru leaned against the doorway. A fleeting thought of escape slid past her, but she knew, while not a martial artist, the young scientist still had height, weight, and muscle above her.

Instead, she tried not to watch too closely as the tiny eight legged cretins ran for their lives.

The ship went black. The whirr of the heater and generator died out, and all other sounds faded away with the light.

With the new quiet came the slap of waves against the boat's sides.

She stiffened when a warm hand clasped tight around her arm.

"Don't even think about it."

It took her a bit to realize that Naru meant not to run. She had stupidly been more terrified of spiders running across her feet in the dark, or worse, into her hair. Then it came back to her—the crewmen, the pervs-

"Lin,"

The lanky silhouette of Naru's assistant stepped passed her and onto the deck. Naru had taken hold of her other arm, his grip tight enough to be painful.

"You're hurting me-"

"Shh."

"I thought you said we had nothing to worry about?"

"Just shut up and get back into the room."

He shoved her in. She lost her balance and fell onto the floor with an 'oomph!"

Naru shut the door behind him, leaving Lin outside. Dozens of questions popped to the tip of her tongue, but at the sound of footsteps, she swallowed them.

A shout, followed by a scrabble of footsteps—which stopped with a clap of a gun. A half-born scream popped out of her mouth before she could slap her hands over it. Her knees slapped together so hard the crash of her knee-caps ran all the way to her toes. Naru had jumped as well, but didn't move.

The door slammed open. A broad shadow blocked the moonlight from them.

"Ah, Mr. Shibuya. Figured you couldn't be far."

"Charles, what's the meaning of this?"

"That's what you British folk don't get: there is such a thing as doing something just for the curiosity of it. Oy, Fernie, girl's in here. She's already shifted, how nice is that?"

Mai paled. Why did they talk like that? Like they already knew?

"Be there in a second. Jackie Chan's still twitching. Just give me a mo-"

Pow. The second gunshot.

She could hardly breathe. All at once she remembered the kind smile the tall guardian had made as he gave her sandwiches. She couldn't believe that she would be witness to a man being shot to death, even if it was only by sound.

Besides her, Naru fell deathly still and silent. She couldn't make out anything past his fringe of dark hair.

The bear of a man stepped forward. The cabin floor shivered with his weight.

"So, Mr. Shibuya, make this easy for us and give up the girl quietly and we might just consider radio in a copter for your assistant...oh, and for you."

Naru said nothing. Mai leaned closer and clutched at his sleeve. She wanted to beg with him, plead, but her voice escaped her. But what connection did he have to her? He had just met her. Surely he would value his and his assistant's life above hers. Surely she couldn't allow it to be anything else. No one would be dying for her.

The Captain snorted. "Whatever. Oi! Fern! Get your fat ass-"

Naru's sleeve tore out of her fingers. The young scientist became a blur—no, a bullet, which shot straight for the Captain's face. With a loud 'crack' the man toppled like a mountain and Mai found herself yanked so ferociously over his unconscious form by Naru that she nearly flew. In fact, she didn't even touch the ground until she hit the banister and had the breath knocked out of her.

"What the-"

Naru's momentum didn't stop there. With agility she didn't know a human body could contain, and still with an iron-like grasp around her wrist, he pulled them both over the banister.

They fell, leaving her breath and the wounded Asian guardian behind. Night rush past, colder than any ocean, rich with salt, brine, and starlight.

Till the ocean reached up and swallowed them whole.


	8. Rescue by Mermaid Ain't Romantic

**An early update for Madking357, because they sent me the sweetest PM in the world that totally made my year. Thank you so much! Please read and enjoy!**

 **Oh! And on my latest trip to the ocean, since I just moved here, I saw jellyfish! I didn't think jellyfish came up so far in the bay, or so close to the surface, it was the first time I saw them in real life! O It was so exciting! They were all like gloop...gloop...gloop.**

Chapter Seven

 _"The tendency [to attack merpeople in the witness's surprise] continued well into the 19th century. A man with a rifle almost shot a merbeing spotted in the West coast of Scotland in 1814, but the others witnesses managed to dissuade him." – blogger Xtrox on_

He didn't know what he expected to feel of her transformation other than sea foam. Her warmth pushed away from him and he heard her scream through the rush of biting, chilling water. He lost his breath, half surprised to find the ocean so cold. But, then again, it was only April. Yet they always made the Gulf of Mexico sound like such a warm place.

Then he heard the gunshots, and the forced cool he held over his mind like a tyrant stopped to waver. Surely they weren't shooting randomly in the water.

He started paddling, half of him desperate to find Mai again, the other half desperate to find the surface, but even after he opened his eyes wide and let the sting of ocean in, all he could see was black.

His lungs started to burn.

 _Bubbles._ He had to find which way the bubbles were heading. Forcing himself still, though he could feel his body sinking further and further, he reached up, desperate to feel the chain of oxygen that would lead him to the surface. But even as the silky pockets of air slipped passed him, he couldn't make out where they went. He thought he had it for a second, but no, they went the other way—wait...

Then the sound came in. Unlike in a pool, the ocean wasn't quiet. It roared. Ceaselessly, without breathing, pressing in on his ears like the static of a television left on full blast. The panic he had been struggling to ignore amplified till even his own thoughts couldn't be heard.

He was going to drown. At eighteen and nearing the height of his career, he was going to die thousands of miles from home, chasing after a mermaid.

It hurt to hold his breath. Every nerve in his body twisted and screamed for air. Any moment it would win over him, force him to open his mouth and inhale the salty sea.

At the very last moment, his toes hit the sand at the bottom.

And as though summoned by the ground itself, firm arms clamped tight around his chest, pulling a long, powerful body against his back. The roar increased, the sand slipped away. He couldn't feel bubbles anymore, just the noise and weight, beating down on him, and those strong muscles moving in waves down his body-

Then warm, sweet air.

He gasped so hard, it hurt. Lights flickered out over the water as the yacht a few yards away came back to life, shining the shadows of the crew out to them. They hollered and scrambled for nets, pointing at where Kazuya had broken through the water's surface.

But he didn't stay. Whoever held him flipped both of them onto their side and sped across the water with breakneck speed. Water rushed over his face and he choked.

"Better catch your breath quick, 'cause we're only going to lose them if we go under."

He tried to tell her that wasn't going to be happening soon if she kept up at that pace, but ended up hacking on water instead. She slowed down, however, and attempted to lift him higher. He felt like a toddler.

"Come on, hurry, deep breath."

"You're—cough—going to drown me."

"Don't tempt me."

He finally managed to swallow a great, burning breath, just as he heard the motor of the yacht's smaller fishing boat burst to life.

"Hold it!"

Mai plunged back down into the depths of the ocean. Darkness surrounded him once more, aided by the speed of her pumping tail next to him. It was like being next to a waving staff of iron.

His chest instantly began to ache, but he clenched his eyes shut, fighting to find the empty space in his mind he put aside for meditation and focus exercises. Just as he found it and forced his twitching muscles to relax and demand less air, she pulled up again to the surface.

"Still alive?"

"Yeah,"

He had just given his answer and spotted the fisherman's boat shooting off adjacent to them in the light of the yacht before she told him to take a deep breath and went down again.

This continued on for some time. At some point he stopped feeling his feet and hands, then his face, and finally stopped shivering altogether. He almost took a breath under water several times as his thoughts lagged and he almost nodded off in the dark white noise of the ocean. An alarm bell went off in his head at this, but he found himself too tired to care. What he wouldn't give to just breathe, to just curl up on the sand and drink as much air as he wanted.

His head floated. Each limb became weightless. Soon all he could feel was the steel of her arms tight about his chest.

Mai. He had expected her to flee the moment she could. Any sane person would have, in the face of guns. And she hated him so much. He had been about to keep her in a tank, like a common animal.

He wished he could see her in action, jetting through the water, a streak of copper scales and fins fanned out like silk skirts behind her.

The ocean fell away. Someone panted next to him.

"Oy! Breathe!"

But he was breathing. Wasn't he? Why did his throat hurt so much?

A warm hand touched his face. He leaned into it. When had he become so cold?

Mai swore.


	9. Hypothermia With a Hot Guy

**Because I like you. And maybe because now I feel silly that I freaked out over jellyfish. It's because I grew up in the desert, okay? They don't really have jellyfish in Southern Utah... *traces floor with finger***

Chapter Eight

" _No siren did ever so charm the ear of the listener as the listening ear has charmed the soul of the siren"_

 _-Henry Taylor (British Author, 1800-1866)_

The jerk she had christened 'Naru the Narcissist' felt like ice. In the white moonlight she could just make out the dark coloration of his gray lips. His breathing had become shallow, and he wouldn't open his eyes.

She shook him, to which he opened his eyes just a crack. A wave came back to lick at his feet and her fins.

"Don't tell me the water was that cold! Are you passing out on me? Hypothermia or whatever it is?"

He blinked dolefully at her. "H-hypo...thermia."

"You have to move, asshole, I can't carry you out of the water. I'm a mermaid, remember?"

He just stared at her. Then, with a weak frown, he said, "I'm not that cold. Just tired."

"Like hell you're just tired, don't you dare fall asleep! Don't make me hit you!"

He grumbled something that sounded suspiciously like an insult before closing his eyes.

She slapped him. Hard.

"What do you not understand that I can't carry you? Get up!"

He reached a hand to his face, as though shocked by the show of force. "Wha...?"

 _"Stand up!"_

Groaning like a kid asked to get up too early, he turned onto his stomach and, with trembling arms, pushed himself to his hands and knees. Mai then watched in despair as he crawled his way up shore, misplacing his hands and nearly tripping over himself a few times. Biting her lip, she pulled herself after him, using her tail the best she could to push herself onto dry ground. She had to dry off, _now_. Just how quickly could someone die of hypothermia? Didn't that only happen to people in the Arctic? Or in the winter? Crap, why hadn't she watched more Discovery channel?

Lucky for her, he didn't collapse once he hit dry ground. He kept going till the top of his head hit the rocky cliff-side of the beach she had pulled them up on before doing that.

She fidgeted around as she waited for her fin to dry, but the night air was cold. Thus, she kept moving, hoping the dry sand would brush off enough of the water, and gathered pieces of sea wood just in case a miracle occurred and she figured out how to start a fire with her bare hands.

"This is what you get for kidnapping me," she said, heart in her throat. "Are you listening? I'm calling you a jerk! You better not be asleep!"

Naru didn't answer.

She opened her mouth to shout again when a familiar pang of lightening doubled her over. For the first time, she eagerly accepted the change. Her consciousness blurred as her legs fell apart and her fins and gills retracted. Panting, she scrambled to Naru's side and reached for his face. Still cold. And his eyes had closed. She cursed.

"What do you do, what do you do, um...wet clothes. Wet clothes make it worse."

Without another thought, she went to tugging at his stupid rich boy sweater. It wasn't till she had unbuttoned his shirt and ripped that off that she finally got a good luck at just exactly what she was doing.

His body more or less matched perfectly with his face. Smooth skinned and trim without being over muscled. The hair on his chest was a fine, black fuzz that curled from the water.

She stared. She was stripping a...really attractive man...

"Ugh, who's going to _die,_ you imbecile!" With a slap on both her cheeks for good measure, she continued tugging at his clothes, forcing herself to focus on nothing else until only his boxers remained, and no amount of death threats could convince her to take that off.

"Alright, alright, um...body heat, yeah." She pawed herself for her temperature, eager to find herself at least warmer than him, then awkwardly sprawled down beside him. Even as she shivered in the night are, she scooped sand onto them, careful to keep as much of her skin pressed to him. In part, she was grateful for the distraction of making their makeshift bed, as it prevented her from thinking too much about the feel of him against her, or the fact that her bikini bottom had been lost in the ocean when she transformed.

If only the idiot hadn't taken her bag, they wouldn't be in this bad of a situation. She had waterproof matches in there and everything.

"If you die it's your own fault," she mumbled at his unconscious face.

Not that she wanted him dead. Horribly maimed, but not dead.

It took a while and made every muscle in her body ache like mad, but when she finally finished with the sand tomb, it actually was quite toasty. She could even see herself sleeping like this if it wasn't for the hot, passed out, probably dying male specimen of a jerk pressed up against her. But she was being a child. This wasn't anything sexual of any kind, this was the natural treatment for hypothermia—as well as the only one she had. And it wasn't like he or anyone else would suppose anything from this if they knew the situation.

Really, she had no reason for her face to be this hot. She didn't even like the guy.

"I'm so nice. So freaking, ef'ing nice. You hear that Naru? I don't even like you and I'm trying to save your life. You owe me a burger when we get out of this. Several of them. And a strawberry milkshake."

At least the yacht lights couldn't be seen. She had purposely swam to the other side of the line of land that framed the beaches of Texas. Nothing was here but grass, rocks, and shallow beaches. Still, the hairs on her neck wouldn't go down, and her ears still rung from gunshots.

Who had been those men, really? Mermaid traders of sorts? They had known of her transformation. Obviously Naru hadn't, so had he just been used then?

Was that why she hadn't been able to find any others like herself?

The young man at her side shifted, sending tiny streams of sand between them. He mumbled incoherently, then settled back down. She was just wondering if he trimmed his eyebrows to be so smooth and perfect when the scientist brought his face through the last inch separating them and nuzzled the bridge of his nose against her chin.

Chills shot up her spine. She glared at him.

"You better really be asleep and dying."

He didn't respond. She sighed and went back to picking out the features on his face. When he was awake, she wouldn't be able to examine him this closely. Not that she wanted to...but she could appreciate, right? That's what normal girls did, right?

Yet, even appreciating brought a familiar ache to her chest. He really was finely made. Anyone could have seen that.

And she found herself hating him more because of it.

 _Please, wake up soon._


	10. Denying Attractiveness is Cliche, Dummy

**Hi guys! Thanks for all your thoughts for my story. They help me figure out what to do with it and teach me how to be a better writer. Also your fun comments to my life just make my day-like letting me know I'm not a complete dweeb for geeking out over jellyfish (. or sea lions and crabs...I love watching crabs, they're so ugly). Please continue to let me know what you think through reviews, and I hope you enjoy this week's update!**

 **P.s. Fairytailcedes, I hope this story is still up to your standards. It is you it's dedicated to, after all. Oh! And you didn't give me your email address so I could send you what I have of the other story you suggested.**

Chapter Nine

 _"_ _Shiloh Pepin, a girl who was born with fused legs, a rare condition often called "mermaid syndrome," and gained a wide following on the Internet and national television, has died. She was 10." –Huffington Post; March 18, 2010_

Kazuya knew he hadn't had a hard life. He had everything a child could ever need to grow up happy and healthy: money, loving and attentive parents, intelligence, and a perfectly healthy body. He even had good looks to top it off. He had never had to worry about stupid things like being accepted by others (why would anyone be worried about that smut anyways?), or whether all his needs would be met. His parents also didn't spoil him, so he learned hard work at an early age.

He attributed his phenomenal success in his field to this fact. But because of this, he couldn't stand whiners. He believed to his core that anyone who had the time to complain about their circumstances also had the time to do something about it. Because, well, look at him! Look at what he'd achieve with his own power! Why didn't anyone else do the same? He couldn't understand it, nor would he stand for it.

Unfortunately, he wasn't completely blind to how others reacted to this attitude of his. People didn't like their strife to be talked down to. They wanted all the attention and cry whining they could possibly milk from it, and thus his friends often called him uncompassionate, unsympathetic, and unempathetic. Whether or not this bugged them depended on why they had decided to stay friends with him, whether it be for his power, brains, and influence, or it simply was because they honestly enjoyed being with him—for whatever reason.

However, it was also these reasons that, even though Kazuya had plenty of opportunities, he had never had a serious relationship. Romance and women had everything to do with emotions and whining to the extreme. Even if he ever did accept the feelings of a girl (and even, at some times, fancied himself attracted), it soon ended with a crash when said girl realized just how empty Kazuya's understanding of human suffering was.

Because his life had been easy.

And yet, sometimes, when he let his guard down and is forced to be aware of the gaping hole in his otherwise perfect life, he'd wish it hadn't been so easy. Suffering was part of the human experience, and Kazuya simply did not understand it, no matter how hard he tried.

It was with suffering in mind that he came to with a pounding headache, grumbling stomach, and aching muscles.

Groaning, he pried open his bleary eyes just to come face to face with a pale, messy haired mermaid. And she was awake.

Such big, shiny eyes. They made him think of warm, sweet things, like hot chocolate after a day of play in the snow.

"Good morning, sleeping asshole."

He sighed. "Not the most eloquent with manners, are you?"

"Hey, I just saved your life in more ways than one. If anyone should be getting a lecture on manners, it's you."

He groaned again and moved his hand to pinch the bridge of his nose, as the conversation was doing nothing for his headache. When the movement sent streams of sand falling past his stomach, he immediately became fully aware of the situation and felt every inch of his skin flush in alarm. And her bikini bottom would have gone missing once she transformed—oh Lord…

Despite every cell in his brain screaming for him to keep it cool and get out of the weird sand tomb before he saw anything, his muscles went ram-rod. He could barely breathe.

On seeing his reaction, Mai also blushed and fidgeted.

"Look, you had hypothermia, it was the only thing I could do, okay? I didn't do anything!"

He wanted to snap back something witty, but too much of him was still freaking out at the details he could feel of her on his naked front. Thank heaven he still had his boxers, but that didn't help much at this time. Had he ever been this close to girl? Naked, never. Hugging? Sure, but was this anything like hugging?

She gave him an impatient glare. "Stop staring at me like that and just get out. I can't until you do."

"What are you wearing?" Idiot, why did he ask? Obviously nigh close to nothing!

She thought the same thing. "Dummy! Just move! You're not the only one creeped out by this!"

Somehow, that broke whatever hold shock had on his muscles, and he flew out in a poof of sand. Gal, he could taste the stuff! Then he zoomed in on his dark lump of clothes and scurried over with sand scrubbing parts of his body he didn't even know sand could get to, and barely maintaining any sort of dignity one could have while only in their trousers.

As he forced on his still wet slacks, the mermaid behind him snickered. "Not that I think you don't have any morals when it comes to relationships—because I think you just don't have any morals, but aren't you freaking out just a little too much? Someone like you has got to have had his fair share of girlfriends."

"And what about your behavior? How many naked men have you woken up to?"

"None. But it wasn't like you were naked or that I like you or anything. Stay turned around while I get out. Once I hit the water I'll give you a shout to know it's safe to turn around."

"Why bother? It's not like I can keep you around anymore."

This gave her pause. "I'm sorry?"

"Don't make me repeat myself, I'm irritated enough as it is."

"Alrighty then. Turn around and I scratch your eyes out."

"Like I'd be tempted."

"And that's the third grader response of the century."

He wrinkled his nose and snorted. Like he cared. Stupid headache. And why did wet clothes have to feel like sandpaper coming on? Wait. Aw, crap, he'd forgotten to rinse off the sand first. Now it was stuck in there and in the unimaginable places too, gawd, he hated the ocean. Hated the beach, hated the sand, hated the sun and the stinking fish smell of it all—

"Alright. You can turn around. I'm going to check the area for your friends, so get nice and warm before we head off."

He turned to face her with a frown, "Head off wh-"….

He'd turned around to what could have only been a picture painted by fantasy. The morning sun blazed gold off of the ocean, turning the sky about it pink and white with light. And laying on her stomach in the midst of it, with sunlit gold waves lapping about her, was Mai, her copper scales bright as new pennies and her silk-skirt fins held above her like a curtain canopy. It didn't matter that her short auburn hair was a wet, stringy mess about her face, or that sandy mud still painted her shoulders, he couldn't deny it.

She made up the most beautiful scene he had ever seen.

He shook himself. Hard. Wait a second. Mai herself wasn't all that beautiful, he had been around better. Models, even. And those chubby, short pink legs of hers hadn't been much to look at, even if they had added to the curve of her hips that went all the way down to her calves and…this was stupid. It was just the whole…mermaid charm.

"Where do you plan on taking me?" He raised a hand to block the sun from his face. It helped with the brilliancy of it all.

"To shore."

"Where on shore?"

"Do I look like a GPS? You should be grateful that I'm willing to take you at all after you kidnapped me."

"For the last time, I didn't kidnap you! You swam into _my_ net!"

"Oh, but did you throw me back into the ocean with a nice apology? Exactly, now tah-tah!"

He shouted something back at her about there being no assigned etiquette to dealing with mermaids, but he nearly forgot all that in being caught up in the fan of sunlit fins and water she made up as she twisted back into the ocean.

Once he was sure she wasn't about to pop her head back up, he collapsed back onto the sand with a whoosh of breath and put a hand to his aching head. Pretty as it had been, the sun off the water had gone at his eyeballs like knives. He pressed his thumbs into his eyes with a quiet curse. Was this how all hypothermia victims felt after the incident? And why did all his muscles hurt so much? Mai had done all the work last night in getting them away.

Mai returned sooner than she expected to find him sprawled out in the sun with an arm over his eyes. The only reason he knew she was there was because of all the loud splashing she did to get back on shore.

"Hey! Dead guy!"

He inwardly winced. "Mind lowering your hellishly high pitched voice?"

"Oh, sorry, would you rather I left you here? 'Cause I'm cool with that. That big boat of yours is sure to come back this way eventually. They just turned to go the opposite direction when I spotted them, and I heard one of them talking about taking laps."

At this he jerked up, wide awake. "Just how close did you get to that boat?" It took him a few blinks to see her clearly, lounging on her belly in the sand a bit from him, her copper tail once more hanging her fins up high in the air and flicking it back and forth like a fan.

"Close enough, why?"

"Do you want to be caught by them?"

"No, but I was careful. And if they see me how they going to catch me, hmm?"

Her idiocy brought a twisted scowl to his face. "Harpoon."

She blanched. "Y-you guys had h-harpoons—"

"Just don't be stupid again. We were going to shore, right?"

"What the hell would you have harpoons—"

"If you shut up and take us now I'll buy you breakfast."

She sighed heavily and let the hand she had been using to hold up her head drop with a splash in the most recent wave. "Well, yippee, on with the mermaid express. Just turn around while I get back in."

"Why do I have to turn around?"

"Because I'll look stupid, okay? You try to get back into the ocean without legs sometime, tell me how cool you feel."

His migraine gave a nasty throb. He pressed his thumbs to his eyes again. "Whatever. Just hurry up."

He had purposely pushed the idea of getting back into the freezing ocean to the back of his mind since he woke up. Getting back in to reach where the mermaid waited for him in the shallows took all of his mental training, especially given the way his already pissed off muscles seized up at the touch. Once he had gotten in chest deep, however, his skin had adjusted, and at least it was painful.

Mai put her arms around his chest reluctantly. Despite her clearly platonic intentions, her touch made his stomach do a little squirm that pushed blood up to his cheeks.

 _Great. So she's somewhat attractive. Not like it's going to help that attitude much._ After all, she had done more than her fair share of complaining, even if she may have a point with keeping her in a tank. But she had been going nowhere, had nothing, and even didn't understand the transformation that had come over her. He had made it clear he only wanted to know what she so desperately needed to know herself in order to survive: what was she? And where were all those like her? Hadn't she seen that?

Yes, his intentions may have been selfish, but it was for both of their benefits. He wasn't planning on sticking her in a freak show or anything ridiculous like that. And he had fed her. And given her a place to sleep. A warm place at that. Had she had better on the cold ocean floor? She didn't have to praise it as five star service, but she could have at least been a little less pissy.

Perhaps he hadn't made that clear.

As he debated on whether or not he cared what she thought of him or whether she had understood his intentions clearly enough, the breathless flight through the ocean left no room for talking. When he wasn't breathing madly for air he was holding it and clinging for dear life onto the slender body. Out of all the things he could discover about a mermaid, he had never anticipated their speed.

By the time she finally pulled him onto his feet in shallow waters, he wouldn't have been surprised if hypothermia was about to pull him under again. She seemed to think the same thing, for she tugged on his shirt sleeves and ignored his protests until he stumbled onto the tiny, shallow beach she had found away from public view. Lucky for her the high tide was just heading out, otherwise she never would have.

Sore, shivering, and headache worse than ever, he collapsed onto the sand.

"Keep moving! It'll keep you warm."

"W-why do you care?" he grumbled, nearly biting his tongue with his chattering teeth.

She glared at him. "Are you for real? Look, I'm not so much of a bitch to let someone get sick or die. Also, you did make me sandwiches and give me a place to sleep, even if it was crap."

This caught him so off guard, he almost forgot about how he couldn't feel his extremities anymore. Wait…so she had noticed?

"Don't just stare at me, move! I'd rather not cuddle naked in the sand with you again."

That got him moving, because neither did he. Though his body begged him to curl up in the warm sand and drift off, he pushed to his feet to jog in place. After a minute or so he started some jumping jacks as well as a few laps of their tiny shore.

While he did so, Mai somehow managed to pull herself onto the sand while he wasn't looking, where she got to work busily covering her hips and legs in sand. It took him a moment to remember that he had promised her breakfast. She couldn't very well transform back without anything to wear.

On that thought…

He stopped half-way through a lap, hesitant. "Um…what, uh, would you like me to bring back? For breakfast."

"Clothes would be nice, actually. I'd like to come with you." She looked up at him from her sand work with a slight frown. "By the way, are you feeling okay? You've been looking like you're in pain ever since I got back."

Again, he was caught off guard. Had he been that obvious? All he had done was rub his eyes, he hadn't winced or anything. Though he had snapped at her for yelling out at him from the waves. Perhaps he was thinking too much into this. Yes, he was. He really need to spend more time with people his age, he was getting too use to the mature, professional atmosphere of his older colleagues and employees.

"Headache. I'll be fine. And I'm only buying you clothes if you promise to let me run some tests on you first." At the repulsed look on her face, he pushed on. "Look, you can't live you're entire life by the shore on your foster dad's credit card, and if you'll just let me do the research I could help you find other merfolk. Isn't that what you set out to do anyways?"

She wrinkled her nose. "Well, yeah, I did think of that, but the way you say 'run tests' makes me think of probes and needles and the kind of stuff people do with rocks and dead stuff. And, I don't think you've noticed, but I'm sort of the kind of freak that has the popular stigma of being petrified and stuffed in a jar."

He groaned. As he had expected. "I said I would take you back once I was done, didn't I?"

"I hardly know you! You could've been lying!"

"I'm not, and even if I was, didn't you hear those men on the ship? Didn't you see them shoot…" he hesitated. No, he wasn't ready to deal with that now. "Look, we're in this situation together now, and the least we can do is cooperate like adults. I'll help you, and in return, I'll get some data for my research. You clearly couldn't have been luckier than to have me be the one at the end of that crab net."

For a second, he couldn't read her expression. It flitted too quickly between anger, something akin to desperation, and then several other feelings too quickly. Then, her face fell blank, she paled, and her shoulders drooped. Without another word she fell back into the sand, dark eyes half-closed and unseeing.

"Mai?"

When she didn't so much as twitch, he trotted over to her side to shake her a bit. The glazed way her eyes stared at the lower underside of her lids unnerved him, and when he lifted his wrist to her mouth, he felt no breath.

For one of the very rare times in his too-easy life, Kazuya panicked.

 **p.s.s. Can any of you see the pattern I'm using for the mermaid quotes at the beginning of each chapter? Whoever can guess what I'm using to connect each quote to each chapter will get a prize. Still thinking of what I could give as a prize, so with your guess send me a suggestion of what you'd like (besides a billion dollars and a lifetime supply of Skittles).**


	11. Libraries: Haven of Hobbos and Mermaids

**One more month until my book comes out guys! Wooo! Ugh...what if no one likes it? Hoppy cock, at least one person is going to like it. Besides, I found a great anime to watch, my cat lets me squash him and squeal when I get excited, and my husband loves me! What more could I ask for?**

 **OH! OH! Good news. The next addition to the Schlankwald serires (or Investigation Beyond), is coming out soon! Next week! Book number six, right? Or was Wend number six? Crowd was 4, Cherry was 5...yeah, Wend was 6, so this one will be 7! Client wants another. ^.^ It doesn't hurt that he's paying me more this time because I've been doing well. Yay money for diapers and food! Nar nar nar.**

 **...and back to feeling like a prostitute...*sigh* I had a dream about that last night and everything. It was awful. I don't want to be a prostitute, writing whore or otherwise.**

 **Anyways. Back to the story. Your weekly update is here!**

Chapter Ten

 _"_ _When you have reached your fifteenth year," said the grand-mother [mother of the Sea King], "you will have permission to rise up out of the sea, to sit on the rocks in the moonlight, while the great ships are sailing by; and then you will see both forests and towns."-Hans Christian Anderson, Little Mermaid_

Mai did her best to ignore the young scientist across the table as she happily munched away at her triple patty burger, but it was difficult. She had never met someone who could make a silent treatment so terrifying. Maybe it had to do with the tense way he kept his face completely smooth while his fingers twitched sporadically, or maybe the determined way he ignored all her attempts to talk to him—but no, that was normal enough.

Then maybe it was just because she had seen his face looking like _that_ when she first woke up from her transformation. It had been the first time she had straight up passed out while her legs split, and she blamed her lack of food. Either way, he had had no reason to look like _that._ Like he had just killed someone and was trying to wake up from a dream.

She tried to glance up at him as inconspicuously as possible. He just sat there, chewing his burger, like the traumatic emotions had never happened, though she knew he blamed her, even if he hadn't said a word since he realized she wasn't dead. At least he had still brought her back clothes, even if they were just sweats and a T-shirt. Had it been too much to expect underwear? A bra, of course not, but maybe panties? But of course. The arrogant narcissist probably didn't know anything about women or their sizes.

Three burgers later and a large strawberry milkshake, she couldn't see how he could keep this up for much longer. But just as she opened her mouth, he spoke.

"We should take care to keep up your calorie intake, if nothing for the transformation's sake."

She frowned. He didn't have to make it sound like that—like she was diabetic or something. Personally, she preferred passing out anyways. It spared her from the unpleasant experience becoming human again was.

"You should also start thinking of ways of how to fend for yourself in the ocean."

She snorted at this. "What, make a spear out of rocks and sticks and eat raw fish? Yum."

"Tasteful or not, it's your life now. You won't always have someone to buy you burgers."

"I know, I know." She sighed and picked up a spork nearby to fiddle with. "I'm just…being a mermaid isn't as exciting as all the Disney princesses make it out to be. I can't even swim off the shelf."

He frowned around his soda straw. "Shelf?"

"You know, where the land drops off in the water to the deep? Freaks me out. Just the fact that you can't see the bottom, and if you did, it'd be like hanging up two miles in the air."

"Sounds exciting to me."

"You're not the one down there."

He shrugged. "I'd decide to make it exciting. It's amazing the things you learn once you just decide to have the guts to step into the unknown. If we're always afraid of stepping in the dark, we'd never learn anything."

Though her knee jerk reaction was to call him unfeeling, she stopped. Hadn't that been what she had been thinking the whole time herself? Besides, this was who she was now. If she never simply decided to take that step, to overcome her fear, she might never meet another of her kind, nor would she ever really understand what it would mean to live in the ocean.

And yet…

She sighed. "Sorry, I'm having a really hard time wanting to live in the ocean. I like it better up here."

"You can't really say. You've never actually lived in the ocean. But, enough complaining, you'll get over that hurdle eventually."

She flinched. "Complaining?"

"For now, finish your milkshake. I don't care if you are the biggest scientific breakthrough of my career, if you pass out again like that I'm tossing you into the ocean."

She would have thought he was being funny if he hadn't looked so live-or-die serious just then. "Oh, come on, I just passed out. It's not like I puked on your Steve Martin shoes or anything, have some compassion!"

When she said that last word, he lowered his soda and gave her a funny, quirky little smirk that was neither sarcastic or happy. "Compassion just got you clothes and three half-pound burgers. If you were looking for pity, you're in the wrong place."

"Who said anything about pity?"

But he was already getting up to throw his wrappers and empty cup away.

After this, she convinced him easily enough to buy her some underwear, though it had to be the most embarrassing thing in her life when she had to have him next to her to punch in the numbers for his card.

 _I should have memorized the numbers for Jason's card,_ she thought.

After that, she followed him to a library, where he logged onto a computer to find the nearest bus station, as well as the number for the local taxi. As she waited next to him, she looked at the bookshelves longingly, but knew better than to look. She had loved reading. But paper didn't mix so well in the ocean. It would just hurt to take a look at them now.

 _I don't want to live in the ocean._ So what if it was unreasonable to live on the shelf or hope she didn't get wet on land? This was all she knew. All the stories, books, hamburgers, strawberry milkshakes, old friends—for she hadn't had the time to make new ones at her new home in Texas.

"Aren't you worried that your foster parents have a search going on for you?"

Naru's voice startled her out of her thoughts. He hadn't looked up from the screen. A page of Mapquest was pulled up with directions to the nearest Greyhound station. She gave herself a sad little smile and looked away.

"Probably. But I'm not too worried about being found."

"Hmm." He plucked out a short pencil from the plastic cubby near the monitor and scribbled down an address. After a minute or two, in which she settled back down into her morose thoughts, he set to typing in some new addresses. "Are foster kids really into drugs and as messed up as they say?"

If she hadn't been interrogated in this same blunt fashion by him the day before, she would have been shocked at his lack of propriety. Instead, she just answered, "I don't know. I haven't been in it that long."

He clicked on a few web link addresses. "Parents just died?"

"Mom did. No one knows my dad."

"Hmm. Accident?"

"Blood clot. In her brain."

"Aneurism?"

"Yeah."

He didn't say anything to this. She expected him to say the usual stupid stuff she had heard, like "that must have been a horrible surprise," and, "so she just dropped dead." But, then again, there really wasn't anything appropriate to say when someone's mom just drops dead.

But, then again, she didn't think about her mom anymore. That had been a year ago. It was just something you lived with.

Yet, he didn't. He had to be professional and heartless, as with everything else.

"Did she leave you anything?"

"If you mean anything about mermaids, no. I sold most of it, and one of the only things I kept was that knife…which you left on your boat."

"Sorry." He had a talent for saying that without sounding it at all. "Should have told me."

"What, along with 'oh, by the way, please let me out?'"

"You really need to get over that."

Her jaw dropped. Did he really just say that? To just…get over it?

She had just taken her breath to give him the snarkiest combat she could come up with to whack him into his place, when a large man walking through the doors of the library caught her attention. He didn't look like the kind of person to visit the library.

In fact, he looked like he could be a sailor. A specific yacht sailor.

She dropped to the floor behind the computer cubical. Naru stared.

"From the boat," she hissed.

It only took him a second to comprehend what she said. Rather than dropping to the floor like a fall out soldier, he clicked on his email tab and typed up a quick message. Before she could read it, he had sent it and switched off the computer.

And by then the sailor was only feet away.

Naru ducked his head down behind the computer cubby wall. "Go. Girl's bathroom. I'll meet you there."

She didn't have the mind to question him. Despite his lack of natural human compassion, he was a boy genius.

Crouched and hoping her stupid cheap flipflops didn't give her away, she trotted to the non-fiction section. Through the shelves she could see a few patrons giving her odd looks as she slid around a display for marine biology.

Above the shelves came Naru's cool voice.

"My, Charles, I could never imagine the likes of you in a library."

"Let's not make a scene, Mr. Shibuya."

"If anyone will be making a scene, it's you. Stupidity always does."

"Where is she?"

"Where do you think? In the ocean."

"Then I guess Tommy just saw her lookalike walking with you earlier."

The restroom sign was a nasty, bubblegum pink from the seventies. She tried not to look too much like a derp spy sneaking into a bathroom, but just as her fingers brushed the cool metal square where the handle was a large hand swallowed her shoulder.

She didn't think. She just reacted with her heel first, not caring where it hit.

Unfortunately, any grown man is hard pressed to be toppled by a girl's kick to the thigh.

A boy who couldn't be much older than ten stopped drinking at the water fountain nearby to stare.

"We're much more than you think we are," said Charles to Naru.

The large hands had already slapped around her mouth and wrangled her fists behind her. Kicking and squawking, she begged the gawking little boy with her eyes to run for it, to get help, but one look at the huge man buckled his knees together with a whimper.

The man moved his fingers just long enough to reach into his pocket.

"Naru!" Wait, that wasn't his name-

He pressed a thumbtack into her neck, or at least, that's what her first thought was before her half-born yelp of pain died off with blackness.


	12. Dr Cellophane, Evil Scientist?

**Some idiot posted a picture of a rescue worker carrying a drowned toddler, who was just the same size and shape as my own toddler. Freaking traumatized me. I bawled and hugged my son for an hour. Then I called my mom (at midnight), and bawled at her, to which she angrily** **told me that most the stuff on Facebook was crap, that I just had to accept that babies and children die, and to go to bed.**

 **...I felt kind of embarrassed** **after that, but at the same time I didn't. At the same time, I am seriously doubting how appropriate it is to put pictures like that on Facebook. Yes, we should be aware that that happens, just so we aren't stupidly naive. But...that doesn't mean we need to desensitize ourselves to it by looking at picture after picture of it.**

 **At the same time, I'm a little ashamed of the world I live in today. I know it's necessary for there to be evil as great as the good, but I guess it's part of our nature to want that which is impossible or unreasonable.**

 **So, I decided to send you guys an early update, because I consider a lot of you my friends. ^.^ And I wanted to, I don't know, just talk about what bothers me for a bit, since you guys often tell me the same. And since you all live in the same troubling world I do, here's a story to give you an escape for a moment. Heaven knows we need it. And, well...thanks. :) For being so kind.**

Chapter Eleven

 _"_ _Weeki Wachee Springs_ _is a natural tourist attraction_ _located in Weeki Wachee, Florida, where underwater performances by "mermaids", women wearing fish tails as well as other fanciful outfits, can be viewed in an aquarium-like setting in the spring of the Weeki Wachee River."_

 _-Wikipedia_

He had had the situation under control, he had been so sure of it. Thirteen years of akido, karate, judo, and kickboxing had made him all too sure of it. His pride in his physical capabilities had been so that he refused to have a personal assistant and bodyguard that couldn't best him first. As the son of multimillionaires, kidnap and ransom was all too real a thing, no matter his age, and so thus he couldn't have been more serious in his choice of Yui, let alone in his own training.

So why was he waking up with the disgusting taste of dry mouth in a room he had never been in before?

He flexed his hands to find, to his chagrin and delight, that whoever had put him here had been stupid enough to leave him untied. At the same time, if they had been able to take him out so easily, perhaps it was meant as a message of their confidence of being able to keep him.

How had Charles taken him again? Let see…the computer desk had been in-between them, yes. He had heard Mai scream some random gibberish and he remembered getting swallowed up in that same thought spinning, uncontrollable passion that had overtook him when she had fainted on the beach. He had ducked without seeing what Charles was about to do next, picked up the chair he had been sitting on intending to throw it at him, and then there had been a click…

Kazuya blanched. A gun. The idiot had a gun. He didn't even have the time to register it before he had been shot. But, then…ah, a tranquilizer. How quaint.

"Naru?"

He flinched out of his thoughts to see a pair of familiar brown eyes and copper hair peering at him from over one of the sterile looking twin beds in the room. The combination of the white sheets, flooring, walls, and lights, all served to give her a sickly, pale look.

"What did you just call me?"

The face ducked even farther, and what he could see of her eyes crinkled, either in despair or humor, he couldn't tell. "Um, it's sort of what I've been calling you to myself. I can't remember your real name…heh."

So it was with humor.

He was not amused.

"You haven't even bothered to remember my name?"

"Sorry. Though Naru fits you better."

"I don't even know where you got Naru, it sounds nothing like my name." He sighed in exasperation. This wasn't the time. "Forget that, do you know where we are?"

"No. I woke up just before you did and took a look around this room a bit." A little pale hand rose above the sheets. "There's a door in the corner that leads to a bathroom, and I think there's one on that wall, but it really blends in. And there's something weird with these walls, they're all super smooth and cool, and there's no lines or breaks anywhere. There aren't even covers on the lights above us, it's like we're in a big glass box or something."

He followed where her finger pointed as she spoke and verified everything that she said. As he took in the flat, unbroken walls and the two white beds (the only furniture in the room), a chill of ice crept up his spine. Glass box or not, there was one thing he was sure of, and that was no common riffraff sailor could have a prison like this in their basement. No ordinary person would have one either.

The panic tingled at the edge of his mind. He didn't know anything about where he was, had no idea what he was dealing with—

He pushed it away and took a deep breath. No. He was smarter than this. He had trained specifically to deal with stress. This was nothing.

After taking note that the rest of his being was untouched, albeit rather dirtier than he remembered, he turned his attention to Mai.

"Why are you hiding behind the bed like that?"

What showed of her face flushed red. "Because those perverts dressed me in something weird, okay?"

What? Her and not him? "Let me see."

"No! You'll laugh."

He scoffed. "Honestly, stop being such a child. I need all the clues I can get."

Still blushing furiously, but resigned, the mermaid stood and stepped out from behind the bed to show a simple cotton, sleeveless, red hospital gown.

From the way she had been acting, he had expected much worse, and he gave her a look that told her so, to which she returned with a scowl.

"Don't look at me like that, it opens up in the back and everything! And I got this stupid collar too." From the neck of the gown she pulled out what could have been a plastic wire. Intrigued, he got up (ignoring the rush of blood from his head), and hooked a finger beneath the collar. Mai's hands flashed to the back of the gown, probably to hold together the open back.

He pinched it. Rather than the hollow tube he had expected, he felt a hard, metal center. Satisfied, he dropped it.

"Must be something to prevent your escaping."

"From what?" she squeaked. "Why would anyone want to kidnap me? I mean, I've never seen a mermaid on TV, and they knew about my transformations."

"Perhaps there's some biological properties of yours they can gain from."

"You mean they're going to…to cut off pieces of my skin and-and make super anti-aging cream to rich ladies or pluck out my eyes and—"

Her voice kept pitching higher and higher, and he feared if he let it go he'd lose his hearing.

"—crush them into a super healing gel, or use my blood to—"

"Mai."

"—or dump me in water and pluck out my scales one by one for jewelry—"

" _Mai._ "

He flicked her hard on the forehead. She yelped and slapped a hand to the spot, but otherwise fell quiet. He ignored her pout and instead went to run his hands along the walls. A perfect box. No windows. No seams. Even the floor had a seamless, industrial carpet that barely had a texture above the smooth walls. The bathroom was also utilitarian, with a toilet and a shower spigot poking out from the wall above a normal, round drain in the floor.

No way out.

Breathe. Focus. Had to make a plan of action. First, the question. Then a hypothesis.

Where were they?

Probably in some cell that whoever his hired crewmen were shoved their guests into.

As he thought, he took in what he knew. The walls did feel like some sort of glass or acrylic. The plumbing was normal, although so well installed into its surroundings that it could have just come forth from the walls as the same, glassy material. Mai gave another little squeak when he fingered her gown to find that, though it had looked like cotton at first, it was actually of a waterproof material not unlike some swimsuits. So they planned on getting her wet. No surprise. She was a mermaid. They had been after her.

Which brought him to his next question: why bring him here as well? If she had been what they were really after, why not leave him? It wasn't like anyone would believe him if he tried to report them, and if they feared anything otherwise they should have finished him off. Not many would question why someone would want to kill a rich, too-smart, too-perfect ass like him. Something told him he should be bothered by that, but it seemed so meaningless compared to the situation at hand.

He had just taken to examining the beds when a soft hiss came from the blank wall adjacent to the bathroom and a panel slid back to reveal an opening which a tall, plain man dressed in a lab coat and accompanied by what could only be bodyguards walked in. It only took Kazuya a second to assess his chances in combat against the muscled brutes as slim, as they held guns and were dressed head to foot in gray, bullet proof armor.

Mai scurried behind him anyways.

The labcoat guy smiled, and it said nothing. Everything about him told Naru nothing. He had ordinary thinning brown hair, droopy eyes, in need of a shave and somewhere between forty and fifty years old. He had nowhere to begin deciphering this man's temperament.

The panel hissed shut behind them.

"Kazuya Shibuya, Ph'd of Supernatural, Paranormal, and Psychic investigations, graduated with honors from Stanford University at sixteen years old."

"You forget my associates in human biology, organic chemistry, and forensic science," said Kazuya.

"Either way, it's a shame you're on this side of the glass."

"Is that what this place is, then? Some cliché idea of an evil scientist's laboratory?"

"Not in the least. This is a harvesting facility."

Mai's fingers twisted up in the back of his shirt. Her knuckles shivered across the bumps of his spine.

Still, the scientist held that plain, cellophane smile. "Excuse my bad manners. My name is Timothy Reid, or Dr. Tim, as my co-workers like to call me. I'm here on behalf of my department to offer you a tour. You looked quite eager to learn about where you have ended up, which I can only expect. Pardon the…unorthodox welcome. Our ground team often times have to take such precautions in order to do their job."

"Kidnapping mermaids?"

"From who?"

This gave Kazuya pause, but only for a second. "It was against her will. You should let her go."

"To where? The ocean? Tell me, young lady, do you know how to fend for yourself in the ocean? Or was that your first attempt to live down there? Did you see some tasty crabs? Did you know eating crab lungs can make you violently ill, even die?"

Mai's hands shook harder. She didn't say a word, which unnerved Kazuya. She had been plenty vocal when he had caught her. This shouldn't be any different. He was there, after all, and nothing could go against his will.

So instead, he lowered his chin to glare out at the scientist from beneath his eyebrows. "Stop it. She gets the idea."

"Does she? Because we intend to take care of her quite well, I've even brought her dinner to enjoy while you are on your tour with us. I hear she likes strawberry milkshakes."

As he spoke, one of the guards stepped out to pull in a small trolley that had been pulled in without Kazuya's notice. That worried him even more. It was rare when anything escaped his notice. Part of being good at what he did was being meticulous by nature.

But, whether or not the tour was a trap or not, he knew there was no other choice for him. He couldn't learn anymore from staying in this room. He didn't have the luxury to consider whether or not Mai would be harmed while he was away, because even if he stayed there wouldn't be much he could do otherwise. Martial arts were good and useful, but not practical to a day of guns and armor.

There was just nothing else he could do.

Mai's fingers clung to his shirt until the last minute, when a guard gently pushed her back into the room behind him and closed the door. The last thing he heard was a quiet, frightened: "Naru."

Why did that affect him so much? And how could it not?

The hall wasn't much different from the cells, and Kazuya didn't fail to notice the two giant men falling in on either side of him, with the scientist in front.

"Now, where to begin?"

"How about where this is?" Naru said dryly.

"Oh, you're just inside the Mexican border, along the coast just beyond the southern tip of Texas in an underground facility we fondly refer to as the American Aquatic Agricultural Center, or the triple A for short."


	13. Unpoetic Black Tears

**Thanks, guys. :) I don't feel so stupid anymore. The world is still sucky, though. I'm not the only one who plugs there ears whenever someone rants about politics, right? I just supposed it's all messed up and there's nothing I can really do. I'm too young, too poor.**

 **On a happier note, we're inching ever closer to the release date of Out of Duat. ^.^ Can't wait to get my Author copies. I want to see it. O.O Maybe lick it...nah, that's reserved for extreme shows of fandom, like when my husband bought Firefly or when I met that guy dressed up as a PERFECT replica of Link at FantasyCon. Or when I got my complete series of the Wallflower manga...*lick***

 **Here's your second weekly update! Let me know what you think! And I'm loving all these reviews, thank you so much!**

 **P.s. Have any of you figured out the connection between the quotes of each chapter? :P It's super simple.**

Chapter 12

 _"But a mermaid has no tears, and therefore she suffers so much more."-Hans Christian Anderson_

Mai hoped they would leave her there, as they said they would, once she finished her bland breakfast (she was so nervous she could barely enjoy the strawberry milkshake). She hoped it really would be just a little trip for Naru before they brought him back and the two of them could powwow about their new escape plan. She even had the thought to try bouncing on the bed in an attempt to pound out all her rankling anxiety.

But only minutes after Naru disappeared with the researcher, a stranger of rubber and goggles came to her doorway. Only their lips showed, broad, and wet. The body pressing against the suit was ambiguous as to the gender.

"Mai Tanyama, am I right?"

Even the voice could have been either male or female. So Mai just nodded.

"Come with me, we need to take your physical."

"Physical?"

"To make sure you're healthy."

That told her so little she couldn't find the strength to move. In an attempt to make the situation just a little less like a horror sci-fi, she reached behind her and once more attempted to tie the gown shut. She had only managed to sitch it up to cover her butt and thighs, but her bare back still prickled in the chill.

"Mai, there is no reason to be afraid. We know all about your predicament. Your parents have been informed."

She froze. "M-my parents?"

"Jason and Stephanie McGomrey. They've given their consent. We are only here to help."

Mai swung her fingers to her front to fiddle. Guess she really didn't have a choice. It wasn't like she could stay in here forever, right? It was little better than Naru's yacht tank.

So, with a weak attempt to calm the sense of trepidation prickling the hairs on her neck, she padded out to the rubber stranger and allowed them to lead her down the white, featureless hall—like a tube—to an opening at the end. Inside it was dark, like a movie theater, because she could see the shapes of people moving about in flickers of lights and a blue glow.

The glow turned out to be a large, cylinder tank of clear water, lit up by a ring of light. Ripples of the waters reflection danced on every surface, giving her the impression of being in the ocean again.

A familiar longing ached in her chest.

"If you'd head this way."

They took her to the side of the tank, where steps with black, non-stick tape lead up to the top to the acrylic trap door hung open to allow entrance into the water beneath. She hugged her hands to her chest and bit her lip.

"D-don't you need to, um, take my weight and height or something?"

"We can do all much easier in the tank. There is nothing in the water, I assure you."

"You're going to let me out, right?"

"Yes. Once all the procedures are done, you shall be returned to your room. If you're a good girl there will even be a present for you when you're done."

That didn't comfort her. If they had to tell that to a sixteen year old, something messed up had to be coming her way.

But, once more, what could she do? She couldn't make out the faces of those sitting behind the panels and monitors that corralled the tank in the rippling light, and the white square of the door back into the hallway had already melted away. She had nothing on her but a thin red gown, no fighting experience, and nothing in which to convince her to just let her go, because she had nowhere _to_ go. And if they really had been in contact with the McGomreys, she didn't even have that anymore.

With weak knees and cold feet, she eased her way up those rough, black steps. The still water could have been glass, despite the few ripples bubbles made as they rose from the bottom.

At least she didn't have to worry about tearing off panties or bikini bottoms in front of everyone.

"Um, is there any way I could have some privacy while I, uh, change?"

"No need," said the mouth beneath the goggles. "We have seen in many times before. We will think nothing of it."

That wasn't her point. No one had ever seen her transform before, not even her. Each time she had been blinded with pain.

But she could sense their impatience.

She dipped her feet into the water. Taking an unnecessary deep breath, she clenched her eyes shut and pushed off of the plastic cover and into the deep tank below.

The pain made her forget about the watchers. But, just like every time, as soon as it begun it was over, and she was hanging over a large, limp, copper fish tail and breathing great gasps of cool water.

She wanted to cry. She had run away to avoid this. Whatever _this_ was.

And then she heard the lid above her click shut. An underwater speaker turned on somewhere.

"Try to hold still while we take your weight and height, Mai. That's a good girl."

She heard nothing as this went on, but dug her fingers into her arms. Scary. Where was Naru? Had he finished his tour yet? Would he be able to tell her how to get out of here? But then, where would she go? If even her parents had signed her off—and crab lungs could kill you?

A click, bubbles, and a little arm came out from the bottom of the tank.

"We need to take your blood pressure and some samples. If you'd put your arm in the ring…"

This went on for quite some time. When the needles came out, she had flinched and found that the tight hold of the ring hadn't loosened up on her arm after taking her blood pressure, and her fingers had already started to fall asleep. The cool voice of the rubber person assured her everything was all right as they took three vials of dark blood from her arm. Only then did the ring release her and allow her to paddle off to the other side of the tank.

"Are we done?"

"Just a moment, Mai."

The moment lasted even longer. By the time the metal arm came back out from the floor of the tank, this time with another needle attached to a syringe, breakfast seemed forever ago and Mai had gotten use to the tank enough to begin thinking that everything really was okay, and that these frightening people really didn't mean any harm. Maybe they'd even be able to provide a life for her back in the society she had grown up in. Maybe she could even be normal.

Another ring came up as well.

"Mai, if you could put your arm in that ring."

"What are you doing?"

"Just giving you a shot to help balance your system to the change. It should help your transformations be less painful."

Mai couldn't see how that could be possible, but put her arm in the ring nonetheless.

"You're going to feel a little pinch."

It didn't feel like a pinch. It felt like a shot, which was a long needle digging into your muscle until it hit the bone.

Then the plug pushed down, injecting the clear something in hot waves across her shoulder and down her arm. Her heart picked up its beat, and she thought the scales on her tail could have lifted up in alarm. Her breathing picked up, she felt a little dizzy, and a bit of her fear started to return.

When the ring released her, she floated to the bottom, hot all over.

"We'll just give it a few minutes now…"

She put a hand to her face. Why did her chest feel so heavy? Why did her eyes burn so much? She didn't feel well, not at all.

"Mai?"

"Yeah?"

"Feeling a little hot? Light-headed?"

"Yeah, and my chest is all heavy."

"That's good. You're reacting to it as you should."

"What?"

Suddenly, a shock went through her system. The water around her burst with bubbles, cackling, prickling, burning and icy at the same time.

The cry came out of her throat so quickly it crashed into her gasp, hurting her throat, locking her jaw in an open mouth scream.

It hurt! It hurt! Her eyes burned to the point they turned to ice, till she knew she had become blind. Cool silk like caresses ran down her cheeks and dropped into the water below. She was screaming, screaming, ears fit to burst, drowning in bubbles—

Then it was done. The bubbles dissipated, and she lay curled on the too smooth bottom of the tank, gasping, weeping, and face smashed up against strange, round pebbles that hadn't been there before. Before she could gather herself, large, longer arms came from the bottom of the tank to pick her limp body up from the bottom. She had only a glimpse of the peculiar, perfectly round dark pebbles that glittered every color in the light before another arm reached in and, with a tiny tube, vacuumed them all up. It didn't leave though, but waited as one last tear fell from Mai's face and plopped down through the water as another round, glittering black gem.

She stared. Were those her…tears? But even as she stared, her aching eyes blurred and she had to shut them once more. Every part of her body twitched from the shock, and her head pounded too much from the surprise to think. She didn't even fight as the arms carried her out and through the water to waiting rubber arms.

When she next opened her eyes, she was on a bed in a familiar room, though the white lights had been dimmed and the white walls had turned into screens displaying dark, peaceful, gently bubbling water. She could even hear it as a gentle ambiance in the background. Her legs had separated once more, and she couldn't pick up what had happened, other than she felt like she had been hit by a car.

Somebody lay in the bed next to hers with their arms thrown back behind their head. She stared at the dark boy for a long while before finding the breath to croak for his attention.

The dim, underwater lighting brought out the straight intensity to his mouth and furrowed eyebrows. The moment he met her eyes he sat up and slipped off the bed to reach her.

"What happened? How are you feeling?" he asked.

"Ow."

"So they did it, then." His face twisted even further, till he didn't look just stressed, but downright alarming, though he still whispered when she expected a yell. "Bastards."

"They…gave me a shot. And then shocked me or—made me make these…" her voice broke. Her jaw had seized up, and her lips were trembling. "Naru, what did they do to me? I hurt."

"They harvested your tears. Mermaids under certain conditions cry black opals, one of the rarest gems on the planet."

She closed her eyes. It was like she had kept them opened in a public, chlorinated swim pool for an entire day. They burned.

"I've never cried black opals before."

"That's probably because you've never given birth to a dead baby."


	14. No Such Thing as a Good Dead Baby Joke

**Because so many of you left confused reviews and I felt bad. Here you go. That's three updates in a week! Feel loved. Because you are loved. ^.^**

Chapter 13

 _"_ _Another story, from 1830 in Scotland, claimed that a young boy killed a mermaid by throwing rocks at it; the creature looked like a child of about 3 or 4, but had a salmon's tail instead of legs. The villagers are said to have buried it in a coffin, though there seems to be no historical evidence of this fishy tale." -_ _Benjamin Radford, Live Science Contributor | November 15, 2014_

Just saying it out loud, even though he knew she didn't understand, broke whatever self control he had left.

He went over to his bed and flung it, frame and all, into the opposing wall. It fell apart against it with a thunder-like crash.

" _Who the hell came up with this idea?"_

"Naru?"

"And for the love of god, stop calling me that! It's Kazuya! Shit, this is so messed up it doesn't even make sense! It's ridiculous! It's laughable! It's a bad dead baby joke made into reality! _What the fuck!_ "

He wasn't done with that bed. He kicked it till one of the mattress seams burst open and padding popped out like pus in a zit. He fully expected lines upon lines of those stupid armed body guards to come rushing in to restrain him, but even after his muscles started to protest under his violence, nobody came.

It was only when foam scattered across the floor like confetti that he collapsed into a corner of the room, panting and struggling to return back to his normal, logical cool. Mai had sat up from the bed, but only opened her eyes every minute or so to make sure he was where she had seen him last. Even in the dark lighting he could see the purple bruises forming around them. They probably only lit the room up like this to put her back into the false sense of security they needed.

Because Kazuya had had the tour, all right. Given he had almost given in to the carefully chosen words of the researcher to make it sound like they simply took care of people who could no longer adapt to normal human society in return for a few quick, painless tears, but then he had heard what the conditions were for black and white opals to be made. Even when the cut and paste scientist had quickly followed up with how the procedure was done to be as quick and painless as possible, they had been walking by an observatory of the enormous aquarium, where the another mermaid swam about the coral reef to music he couldn't hear. He still couldn't shake off the wan looks on her pale, thin face, or the way her dance looked like a pleading prayer whenever she lifted up her emancipated arms to the faceted surface of the water. She could have only been in her early twenties, with mousy brown hair and a green tail. Unempathetic or not, even Kazuya couldn't miss that.

The scientist picked up on his dropping opinion and went into the pros of the facility. A carefully monitored health program that balanced the mental, emotional, and physical health of each of its patients, and then the too good to be true job benefits for each of their employees. Even the janitor made Kazuya's career look like a McDonalds cashier when pay, vacation time, and insurances were compared. But then, when the price for only one of the flawless opals reached into multi-millions, they could afford ridiculous luxuries like that.

He had almost been willing to excuse everything he saw before when he had heard that. The scientist even took him into their other buildings, where seaweed and the like were grown for more common commercial purposes, which had successfully numbed him up until they returned him to his quarters to think through their offer to have him join their team. Until then, he was to serve as Mai's companion, one of which was assigned to each mermaid to promote mental and emotional well being.

But, like it always did, once the numbness wore off, the pain and anger was still there. And one look at Mai's punch drunk face had pushed him over. He didn't need to know just how she felt to understand the pathetic whine to the words, 'I hurt.' And like he had done at the beach, for some reason, because Mai was involved, he just lost it.

Yet, now that he had had his chance to blow up, he was beginning to regret it. They would be watching. They would have seen that. And he needed to get on their good side if they were to get out, because what little he saw of the security system (the doorways that required two of the guard ID's to pass, the cameras, the heat sensitive tiles), had told him more than enough of what they thought of letting even one of their mermaids go. Not only that, but his plastic guide had listed off the numbers of just how rare mermaids were. Mermen didn't produce the needed product at all, and Mai had been the first mermaid to be found in 'the wild' for the past fifty years. The others had simply been allowed to grow in society before being carefully maneuvered back into the facility for harvest once they had finished puberty.

That just brought up even more unpleasant memories from his history lesion of the Triple A. Fifty years ago they hadn't had the technology to simply reproduce the hormones and physical indicators for their opals…pregnancy and torture had to be done manually.

A sniff distracted him from his thoughts. Inwardly, he groaned. Of course she would be crying.

"Please don't cry." He'd always sucked at comforting crying, forget crying _girls_.

"I'll cry if I want."

"Doesn't it hurt, though?"

"Of course it hurt, it feels like my eyes have been sunburnt and then dipped in acid."

"That should go away after a few nights of sleep."

"Oh, so he gave you all the details? How nice." Her tone cracked with bitterness. "So, did they offer you a job? You going to help hook me up and zap me once my eyes are better?"

Even without looking, she flinched the moment his glare landed on her, as though expecting it. "Sorry, that was uncalled for."

"Yes, it was," he growled, then sighed. "But probably not entirely inaccurate."

"What?!"

"What option do I have? At least they'll be putting you to work on white opals instead of the black. Those aren't as bad, and a mermaid can only be made to produce black once a year—"

"What option do you have?" Her voice had started to hit that migraine inducing pitch again.

"Relax, Mai—"

"They just made my body simulate giving birth to a dead baby for a bunch of rocks, and you expect me to relax?"

" _Yes._ It's over now, so get over it and listen for a minute—"

" _Get over it?_ You really are an asshole!"

He had to take a steady breath and put a hand to his face, otherwise he'd take off his shoe and throw it at her. Why did women have to be like this? Of course he hadn't meant it like that at all. Hadn't he just totally lost it in a way he hadn't since he was a child in front of her? It just wouldn't help to have her freaking out if they were to figure out a plan of action, or more importantly, a way of safe communication.

"Mai, do you want to get out of here or not?"

"And do what? They said they contacted my parents, though they lied about everything else. And you said it yourself, what am I going to do once I get out, eh? Keep swimming in the ocean and hope some other mermaid that hasn't been seen in fifty years finds me before I starve to death or choke up on crab lungs or get munched on by a shark?"

"We go back to what we originally planned, idiot! I said I would help you find them, didn't I? Or have you forgotten who I am?"

"And just who the hell is that? Sorry to break it to you, _Naru_ , but I've only known you for two days!"

This wasn't getting anywhere. "Fine! Stay in here and be tortured for the rest of your life. I'll sign a contract to keep my mouth shut and leave, how about that? _I'm_ not a mermaid!"

That shut her up. He went to digging his fingertips into his temples. What was it about this girl that always gave him headaches?

When he got up to pace, for a lack of anything better to do while he brainstormed, Mai had laid back down, though he doubted she had fallen back asleep.

So, how did they communicate without the scientists catching on? Simple, they didn't. And not like it mattered since he already screwed that one up by throwing his stupid little fit—where had that come from? Sure what they were doing was inhumane, but getting upset about it wasn't going to do anything.

But he answered that question the moment it came up. It was because of Mai. Something about Mai acted as a catalyst to his reactions. If it had been anyone else he had walked in to find weak and black eyed, he could have handled it. He would have remained under control.

He moved on before he could delve more into that thought. It wasn't important.

Even if they did see his reaction to what he had learned, they may still be willing to offer him a job with the idea that the money and benefits would persuade him in time. People were remarkable weak like that, willing to justify a breaking of moral law for self-satisfaction and gain. If they did do this, he would take the job and learn as much as he could about the facility in order to get Mai and the others out, though he understood that, as an employee, he'd be watched probably even closer than the mermaids themselves. And as to the contract he would have to sign to gain his own freedom, whether in or out of the facility, employee or not, he'd have to find a way around that as well. Perhaps his parent's lawyers could argue an annulment to the contract due to Kazuya had been coerced to sign it.

And if they didn't return with the job offering? He would fulfill his obligation as 'companion' and go from there. No jail was full proof, and no ship was unsinkable, especially when containing someone like him.

In a way, it almost excited him.

"I'm taking a shower." The piping had looked to be the most normal part of their cell.

"Be my guest," she muttered.

He closed the door behind him, twisted the handle, and got in, leaving his old, sea encrusted clothes on the toilet seat. Unlike the main room, which screen-like walls had been switched on to a comforting, dark, underwater scene, the bathroom remained the same blinding white. He found himself wrinkling his nose at how the light made him look yellow-pale with black hair. What was he, a bee? It did serve as good lighting for examining where the drain, handle, showerhead, and toilet met the walls, though.

A whiz cut him short, and just right of the shower, a small panel, the size of a good sized novel, opened up above the toilet. As he watched, a little metal arm with pincer like claws reached out, took up his clothes in one pinch, and pulled it into the wall. The little panel didn't stay shut long, as the arm returned with a pair of sky blue scrubs, which it dumped onto the toilet seat and disappeared.

Kazuya smirked. Now there was something he could work with.


	15. Empathy Isn't That Hard

**Hey guys! Early update! :D I hope you like it! Please tell me what you think. ^.^**

Chapter 14

 _"...when the ship parted, she had seen him sink into the deep waves, and she was glad, for she thought he would now be with her; and then she remembered that human beings could not live in the water, so that when he got down to her father's palace he would be quite dead. But he must not die." –Hans Christian Anderson_

Mai lost her appetite. Her insides just wouldn't stop churning with protests of being violated, as though someone had stuck a stick inside and stirred her organs up. Now and then a random muscle would twitch, and she'd have to restart whatever breath she had been taking. It didn't help that a thin, itchy rash had come up where the wire collar had rubbed against her neck.

And then her eyes. Burning, aching, throbbing—how could she still see?

When the hiss of the doorway opened, signaling the return of one of her captors, she curled deeper into her nest of blankets. They had lied to her. And her twisted up organs shied away from being manhandled once more.

She could hear Naru talking to them about the food. They told him to convince her to eat, and gave him something for her eyes. When he asked why they couldn't do it for him, they simply said he was the companion and lift with another hiss of hydraulics. Of course they would say that, because they knew what they had done to her was just one more reason not to eat anything they gave her. At the same time, it angered her. How could they intend to turn Naru both into a friend and an enemy like them? How was giving her no one to trust 'monitoring' her mental and social health?

But Naru came to her bedside with a soft tap of his shoes—the only thing that remained to both of them from the outside world.

"Mai, even if you don't feel like it, you should eat. Starving yourself isn't going to help."

"I don't know, makes perfect sense to me."

"If you're thinking of dying to get out of your situation, that's a cowards route."

"How about you willingly starve yourself and then call yourself a coward? Eating seems to be the coward route to me. Living in luxury until someone saves you, pfft, pleaes."

"I'd hardly call this a luxury. Just eat, you're being ridiculous."

This made her prickle with ire. "Is that all I am to you? Ridiculous? Honestly, have you even tried to imagine how I feel?"

"No, because I'm too busy trying to prevent you from feeling that way again. I figured that would be more important."

His cool, Vulcan logic proved difficult to refute, and it annoyed her to no end. Of course. Naru's goal wasn't to be her friend, but to get them out. That should be her priority as well. But that was besides the point, how would forcing herself to eat do anything but make her throw up?

"And if you're afraid of throwing up, they've already mixed in some anti-nausea medication into the porridge."

"Get out of my head!"

"Then stop being so easy to read. Eat. Now. Or I'll force you too."

Which he would actually do. With anyone else that might be funny to watch, but with Naru's serious face and iron grip…

She sat up and opened her eyes just enough to see where the food was. In that brief second open, they watered and smarted so badly she couldn't help but whimper and close them once more.

Just one more reason not to eat.

She tried one more time to keep her eyes open before Naru heaved a sigh.

"Open your mouth. I'll feed you."

"I can do it myself! Just give me the spoon."

"And watch you poor it all over your chest? No, I'd rather not, and you need every calorie you can get for what's ahead."

"You make it sound like I'm going to battle or something."

"Don't be so melodramatic. Open."

Neck warm, but at a loss of what else she could do, she complied, trying not to think of how much of a goober she must look like with her mouth wide open like a baby bird's.

The warm spoon that slipped past her lips was surprisingly gentle, though, and the porridge sweet and grainy. The cool touch of a raspberry brushed against the inside of her cheek. She had to struggle to remember how to swallow before it went down and she could open her mouth again. Once more, Naru handled the spoon with care.

He didn't speak as he fed her. Only the clack of the spoon against the plastic bowl, along with the occasional bubble of underwater ambiance, filled the silence. A few bites in the anti-nausea medication started to kick in, and Mai's hunger returned with a vengeance. At certain intervals, Naru would lift a straw to her lips, which she would obediently suckle a milk of sorts.

"There. Now keep your eyes close. They also gave me some topical medication for the burning. I suspect they are eager to get you up and going soon."

"That's not going to help me feel better."

She braced herself for his snotty reply of: "it wasn't intended to help you feel better," or "making you comfortable isn't important here." Instead, he said nothing, which took away her much needed distraction of his cool fingertips dabbing at her closed eyelids with almost unnecessary tenderness.

"You don't have to be so careful," she said, when she started to wonder if she should feel awkward.

"Doesn't it hurt?"

"Doesn't matter, does it? They're just going to hurt me more. And it isn't going to help us, as you said."

Nevertheless, he didn't press any harder. She pressed the pads of her fingers together one by one until she reached her thumb, then reversed the order.

"Look," he said. "If you give up here, it won't matter if I find a way out. The desire to survive is a very real and powerful thing. It can trigger the release of adrenaline glands, which can, in turn, induce the body to do phenomenal feats normally outside its capabilities. If sparing you just a little pain will give you that needed desire, then it is important."

His finger lingered at the corner of her lashes before lifting to reload on more cream, which felt cool and tingled against her poor, abused eyes.

In a way, his answer made her smile. "You're so scientific with everything. Couldn't you just say you feel bad for me and don't want me to hurt more?"

"What would that do? And what else would I feel anyways? I'm not so much a sadist to enjoy the suffering of others."

She made a short, amused noise. "Could have fooled me."

This gave him pause. The finger lifted. "Don't tell me this is about the tank again. I'll have you know I tried very hard to ensure your comfort."

She opened her mouth to bring up the spider hell, the toiletless tank, the freezing room, and the crab net, but before she could say it the blankets, heater, sandwiches, clothes, hamburgers, and the feel of his warm hands on her wrist when she came to on the beach. He had looked so pale, then, and his eyes had been wild.

Could it be that…he really had been doing his best?

"Are you…?" She hesitated for the right word. Just in case she was right, she didn't want to sound more ungrateful. "You mean that?"

"Yes. I mean that. And to finish your question, yes, I am bad at comforting. I'm not even entirely sure of what entails to dealing with other's…whatever you want to call it. Misfortunes." The cool finger returned to her eye. It came so suddenly she didn't have time to smother her little sigh of relief. The more he applied, the more the pain eased. "I can understand how you would be mislead into thinking I am good at everything, but I have faults just like everyone else."

"Of course, arrogant to a fault. That's why you're Naru."

"Why do you call me that anyways?"

"Because you're a narcissist. But that's a mouthful, so I settled with Naru."

She could almost see his deadpanned expression as he said, "I am not a narcissist, nor have I given you any reason to believe that I am."

"Too late now. Once a nickname is given for me, it sticks."

"Then call me by my real name. Kazuya."

"Nuh uh, I like Naru."

"Well I don't, and it's getting on my nerves."

"Guess you're just going to have to deal with my faults too, then, huh? Names stick for me. End of story."

"That isn't a fault you can't help, that's just your own stupid stubbornness."

"Whatever you want to call it. Hey, what is that stuff? I kind of like it."

His finger left and she heard the clack of the lid. "Beats me, but you shouldn't open your eyes when it's on. Most topical ointments aren't to be put directly on the eye."

She heard the squeak of her bed as he got up from it, and then the sound of rushing water as he cleaned his hands in the bathroom. The squeak of his magically repaired bed signaled his return, and she wondered how they had fixed and cleaned the cell without them noticing. Naru had been awake when it happened, though, and had said something about arms, which made Mai think of the little arms at the bottom of the tank with a shudder.

"You can help it, by the way. Your fault."

Naru sighed. "By what, just 'being more compassionate?' I've listened to so many people trying to instruct me on this matter that's so 'well duh' to everyone else that I highly doubt you have anything different to tell me."

"That doesn't mean you still can't learn. With an effort, you can do anything."

"I know that. But effort does you little if you don't know where to put it."

"Then, how about we just start with this," she folded her hands on her lap and turned her face to what she hoped was his direction to show him the best smile her sore cheeks could handle. "I feel better now. A lot better. Before I was holed up in my sheets wishing I could die, but talking to you has helped me a lot. And how…softly you treated me, it showed that you felt sympathy for what I did."

He paused for a minute. Then, "well, I can't go around spoon feeding everyone, can I?"

"It's not that. It's the way you did it. With care." Her neck was getting awfully hot again.

"Of course I tried to be gentle, I didn't want to hurt you any more than you have."

"And there you go."

"What?"

"I feel better because of that. All you have to do is communicate that you are really aware of how someone else hurts."

"That's retarded. Of course I'm aware, why do I have to make it known to help them feel better? Isn't that just egotistical of the person who's hurting? 'Oo, look, I'm in so much pain, give me attention!'"

"Because you just do, and stop sounding so annoyed, I'm trying my best over here!" She crossed her arms over her chest and pouted. "You really think way too much about this. I think you already have the 'well duh' instincts, and you just choose to ignore them for your own insecurities."

"I don't have insecurities."

"Idiot, everyone has insecurities. Otherwise, they wouldn't be human."

"What's your basis for that?"

She gave a silent, inward scream and moved to tug on her hair. What was it about this guy that gave her a headache? Couldn't he just listen to his emotions for once and stop acting like such a robot? Honestly.

"Look, not everything in life is complicated, okay? Not everything has to be supported with evidence and citations and whatever else the crap you scientists use to support your theories. Sometimes the most important things can be understood by two year olds, simply because they are—like loving your mom and dad, or that you want to be good, or even how to love. If you try to complicate it, you'll never understand it, because that just what it isn't! And that's all I'm going to say on it, because we're both just getting on each other's nerves."

With that, she plopped onto her side, pulled the covers over her shoulder, and searched through her brain for a story that she could twist and mangle up to entertain herself with. It wasn't like she had anything else to do in this stupid cage. Couldn't they turn on one of these walls to the news channel or something? Even football would have been more interesting than this stupid ambient water backdrop.

She wasn't given long. The door hissed open once more, and she heard the footsteps of a stranger entering in.

"Ms. Tanyama, it's time to meet your neighbors. And Mr. Shibuya, Dr. Tim would like to have a word with you on what you have decided."


	16. To Sign Away a Fish

**Ugh, totally screwed up a name. Sorry about that.**

Chapter 15

 _"_ _Hannah is a professional underwater mermaid, creating her own functional yet highly exquisite mermaid tails. A dedicated Ocean activist, Hannah travels the world performing for charity projects to commercial ventures to bring awareness to the ocean and its precious animal life."-_ _mermaid/_

Dr. Tim offered his assistance without mentioning the bed smashing incident. Kazuya got all the more suspicious when no word of a contract came up in the papers he slid across the table to him, along with the clothes he had been taken in, freshly laundered and pressed. He double checked to make sure he hadn't missed it. There was the privacy agreement, health insurance, address, proof of American citizenship—

"If we're in Mexico, is this necessary?" He asked, waving the voucher.

"Triple A is a government funded organization, in an indirect way, with the purpose of supporting the financial needs of federal operations. Employing Mexican citizens is somewhat counterintuitive to an institution created to fund the general population of the United States of America."

Translation: the American government wanted money politics couldn't mess with too much in order to fund whatever they like.

This amused him with a rather dry humor. Like he cared. Though it did explain one thing.

"I figured there would be a contract of secrecy I'd need to sign whether I worked here or left."

"Oh, no, that's ridiculous. Mr. Shibuya, I get the impression you think we're keeping you here against your will, which isn't the case at all. If you wanted you could leave right now. I'm even in contact with your assistant, who would be waiting to pick you up."

Kazuya flinched. "My a-assistant?"

"Yes, a Lin Koujo. And don't worry, he's been fully compensated for the inconsiderateness of our ground division."

Before he could make himself sound like a complete fool in front of the cellophane scientist by blustering how that couldn't be, because Lin had been shot, he remembered how he, Kazuya, had been shot as well, but with a dart gun. Those buffoons probably didn't have a single real gun on them.

"But, that being said, you will be free to, as they say it, 'spill the beans' on the Triple A. I think you'll find yourself hard pressed to find anyone who would believe you, and if on the off chance you managed to start trouble, I'm sure you wouldn't want to tread on the toes of those up in the Presidential office. But that's making this all sound rather grim, I just want you to know that you are quite free to do whatever you like. I'm sorry I couldn't have you wander our facilities to your pleasure, but you need the right clearance for that—for your own protection. Also for the security of our girls, of course. Can't have them wondering somewhere they could get hurt."

The shock of Lin still being alive didn't leave soon enough, so Kazuya had to push it down deep in order to go to the concern next in his list. "What will I be doing here, then? I don't see what you need with a paranormal investigator."

"My superior believes a paranormal investigator is exactly what we need. See, this is rather sensitive information, but as you saw the day before, the number of our mermaids has dropped to four, not including your newest addition. This is due to low birth numbers among our mothers and the short life span of mermaids admitted. The stress of producing the pearls can only be handled for a few years, at most, despite all of our efforts to make each of the girls is as comfortable as possible. Thus—"

"You want me to find where the merfolk are hiding."

"More or less. That was your original intention, wasn't it?"

"You tell me, isn't that why you snuck your ground division onto my ship?" This wasn't good, he was losing his temper again. Ugh, he could handle this, why wasn't he?

"Let's not argue logistics. Everything is out on the table now, and if you're okay with this, the papers are there. Sign, and you're officially on the payroll. We will fund everything you need."

So they really did have him in a corner, then. He could either let them tag along and be paid for it, or he could be stalked by them and not be paid. Either way, he was on his own.

And what did Mai get in all this?

"Is there any chance I could get my mermaid back? I did catch her, and she was in my possession before your men rudely took her from me." No point arguing with this particular man about the inhumanity of torturing mermaids to death for opals (and without the pretty cover of signing papers, at that). He wasn't in the mood to hear all the expected bullshit on rights, humans, comfort, how they didn't have anywhere to go or any basic ocean survival skills, yada yada.

"No."

Well, he had expected that, but he had hoped the man cared enough to at least make it look like he was thinking about it. At least Dr. Tim had the mind to try and look sorry.

"I mean, that isn't in my power to say, but at this point, no. And I don't think my superior would be open to it, especially given how low our mermaid count is. She is considered wild, after all, and not a pet. I'm surprised with you, Mr. Shibuya. Mermaids are people too, not fish."

The hypocrisy of that statement almost made him laugh out loud.

"And there is also one last thing we'd like to ask of you as our employee."

Kazuya picked a pen from the white mug next to him and clicked it. "Go on."

"Since you are the only person she trusts, we would ask that you remain her companion for the time being and conduct as much of the investigation from her side. For her welfare, that is."

Kazuya paused, pen over the paper, mind racing. Could he handle more of her? Not of her, but more of the bruised eyes, the pitiful wails, the strange overbearing loss of control she somehow inflicted on him—

Then he thought of it happening without him.

And signed the papers.


	17. Home Grown Mermaids

**Gal, have you ever had a zit INSIDE your nose? Man, they suck. And they freaking HURT. Whoever said zits stop once you're out of your teens, they lied. Got an aunt who told me to take fermented cod oil to get rid of them, but I sort of froze up on 'fermented.' Aren't fish bad enough without being 'fermented'?**

 **Anyhoo, here's your update! Please let me know what you think. ^.^Pretty, pretty please?**

Chapter 16

 _"When first the sisters had permission to rise to the surface, they were each delighted with the new and beautiful sights they saw; but now, as grown-up girls, they could go when they pleased, and they had become indifferent about it." –Hans Christian Anderson_

Since her eyes still hurt too much to keep open, they led her to somewhere that smelled of seaweed, water, brine, and that indistinct musk she had come to recognize as ocean. Even as the cool fingers of the strange woman who had led her took her vitals, Mai's skin prickled, and her muscles tensed for the change. Pain nipped at her toes like Jack Frost, too eager to burst into fins.

Then the cold fingers prodded her forward to the water's edge.

She didn't wait. She didn't even care if she opened her eyes just to find another tank.

Mai dove.

The pain of the transformation had already begun at the water's edge and took her by surprise with its swiftness. The caress of seaweed pulled her down through the water as her legs twisted together, her flesh split, her muscles meld. Scales ruptured across her skin to her lower back, which buckled to support new tendons and muscles. Long, supple fins brushed against the skin of her arms.

Then the slash of a knife along her ribs—and Mai took a great gulp of water—

Just as warm hands, dozens of them, reached through to her arms, her face, and her back. Soft hair brushed against her bruised eyes, just to be swept away by gentle fingers.

"Poor thing," voices whispered. "Poor thing, poor thing."

She forced her eyes open.

Three girls held her up in the forest of seaweed. Their long hair, black and two shades of blond, drifted about their faces like auras. Each pair of eyes looked ready to cry, with mouths twisted against it beneath them and black tube collars about their necks to match hers.

And without having ever met them in her life, without even knowing their names, Mai found she felt fond of them as sisters, like an instinct. Though her eyes ached from the effort, she kept them open to take in the details of their faces. The dark haired one looked to be of Native American decent, with large, warm eyes and red scales that glowed like uncut rubies in the flickering light above. The platinum blond had a pinched, wan face, as though she had known a lot of sickness in her life, but had pink lips shaped like a dragonsnap flower and an amethyst tail treading against the walls of seaweed. And lastly, the brown-blond, who had blue eyes the color of the sky and an equally bright sea-blue tail.

Mai put her hands up to her face. She was sobbing, she could hear it, though no tears came.

"Welcome to the aquarium, Mai. We hope we can be friends, even though we aren't from the ocean like you. You should tell us all about it."

Mai shook her head. "I'm not from the ocean. I'm from Texas."

"That's great, then! You're just like us!"

"A-am I?" Mai took a great breath. "Oh Lord…"

"That's kind of the same thing I said. Come on, let's go where we can introduce ourselves. Can you swim? You don't have to open your eyes, we can guide you."

It had to be the most exhilarating thing she had experienced yet as a mermaid, being led by the hand through curtains of seaweed out into open water. The smell of ocean turned into a taste of skin. The aches of her body eased as her new friends easily pulled her along and happily explained to her about the tiny bay that had been sectioned off from the ocean just for them to enjoy. There was no getting out, of course, but there was also no getting in from the outside, giving them complete privacy. They could stay in as long as they liked, but as all of them had been raised on land, each of them returned to the bay which Mai had been dropped off at least before dark. The tiny reef of seaweed and coral still wasn't too comfortable to any of them, mainly because of all the life that lived there as well.

Even as Sonja, the dark haired girl who Mai found was half Cherokee, guided her fingers to brush against the spines of a sea barnacle, she couldn't wait for her eyes to be healed so she could look at it all. Of course she had seen all of it before in her short time beneath the ocean waters, but somehow it all seemed new and exciting with others to enjoy it with.

Both of the blonds were named Amanda, though the darker of the two—who expressed a deep fondness for all things occult and geeky—went by Mandy, while the sickly looking smaller of the two whose bubbly chirp of a laugh always made Mai smile, went by Amanda.

"What's the likelihood they should get two mermaids named Amanda? Honestly!" said Mandy. "It's a miracle. A freaking sign from God."

"Of what? That chocolate will become waterproof?" retorted Sonja.

"Isn't it waterproof?" asked Amanda.

"Have you ever eaten chocolate after dipping it in the water? Weird crap that is, and it gets all diluted."

"Why were you dipping your chocolate in water anyways?"

"What, you haven't? Even on accident?"

Mai's arm moved up as Amanda shrugged. Her hand felt so slender against Mai's, and cooler than the water about them. Now and then one of the girl's fins would brush against her tail.

"By the way, Mai, your fins are so gorgeous! They're all flowy and long—"

"Like a veil," cut in Sonja. Even as she said it, somebody's fingers slid through the folds of Mai's fins.

Amanda sighed dreamily. "I bet if we were born down with other mermaids, you'd be considered a super beauty, or a model."

Mandy snorted. "Models aren't super beauties, they're scrawny stick chicks used for marketing."

"That's mean! I think models and non-models are gorgeous!"

"Then why are you using models as a comparison for beauty?"

"Girls, your both pretty," said Sonja. "Now have any of you seen Jamie?"

There was some muttered muses as to where she could be, but it was eventually decided that she was 'there,' which was quickly explained to Mai as the grating that separated their lagoon from the rest of the ocean.

"Can we go there?" Mai asked.

"Sure, though there's nothing much there but sand," said Mandy, who took up her other hand besides Amanda to lead her up from the seat of soft sponge and seaweed they had found.

"Then why does Jamie like it there so much?"

The three girls hesitated. The tension brought in the background murmurs of the ocean currents that Mai had ignored up until then. In the time it took them to debate on their answers, Sonja came up from behind Mai to run her fingers through her fins once more, almost as though in thought.

"She, well—"

"If anyone is a real mermaid, it's her," said Mandy bluntly. "She has the ocean in her heart and is constantly hoping one of the wild ones will hear her and come up to the boundary. A little obsessed if you asked me."

"That isn't very nice," said Amanda.

"Well she is. The merfolk are smart enough not to come near this place, otherwise we wouldn't all be homegrown."

"You make us sound like garden vegetables," said Mai with a smile.

"You get what I'm saying though, right?"

"Yeah. I do."

"Oh, and heads up, Jamie's sort of a loner—"

"But she's really nice!" cried Amanda over Mandy.

Mandy made a little grunt of annoyance. "You think everyone is nice."

"Not so! Dr. Tim isn't very nice."

"Understatement of the century."

"Let's not talk about him," Sonja said quietly.

Like that, the girls clammed up. It took a few moments for Mai to come up with something else to talk about, but just as she opened her mouth, a rich, high sound slipped through to her like a strand of cotton candy, and grew louder as they swam. It was wordless, but had a vaguely familiar tune.

"Hear that?" asked Sonja.

"It's beautiful. What is it?"

"Jamie," said Amanda wistfully. "Don't let her know you heard her, though, I think she's shy."

"And she'll crack you one in the face."

"Mandy! Will you stop it?!"

"What?"

Mai's full attention was on the voice though. She never knew singing could sound like that. It sounded only vaguely human anymore, and was more like the sweetest, richest, most beautiful violin she had ever heard. She could almost feel her own throat thrumming along with it, but Jamie wasn't the only one shy about singing. Mai knew her tone deaf croak would only ruin the music.

Before long, though, Jamie must have spotted them, for her song ended with an almost abrupt snap.

She came with a swish of bubbles and thrum of a powerful tail.

"Girls," she said simply, expectantly. Mai could feel the push of water as the last girl stopped in front of them. She tried to pick out the tones of her singing in that one word.

"Jamie! This is Mai that Dr. Tim told us about! Isn't she pretty?" chirped Amanda.

"Yeah! Check out her tail, isn't it sick?" said Mandy.

Jamie made a 'hmm' sound in her throat.

"Seen anything interesting?" asked Sonja in her low, quiet way.

"Flounder. And some jellyfish."

"Huh."

Awkward silence. Mai dared to peek out through her swollen eyes, but she only caught a glimpse of murky green scales before Mandy tugged her back and her battered eyelids flapped close.

"We didn't interrupt anything, did we?"

"Just thinking," said Jamie.

"What about?"

Mai heard nothing and figured Jamie must have done some sort of gesture she couldn't see.

Another awkward silence.

"Well, I guess we'll show Mai around the rest of the place," said Sonja, who sounded as though she had much more of a grip on the conversation than the other three. "Would you like to play some Sea Squirt later?"

"Maybe."

"Alright, if you feel up to it, we'll be over by the dock.

Without waiting for a response from Jamie, the two hands holding Mai led her up and away from the cooler waters. Mai frowned. She waited till she thought they were far away enough before asking why they had all seemed so uptight around her.

"It's not that we're uptight," said Sonja, her fingers brushing through Mai's tail every so often. Was getting a little weird how attached to her fins the Cherokee was. "It's just we're not sure how to react to her since…"

"It's not like she helps any either," said Mandy.

"She's shy!" protested Amanda, as though what Mandy had said had been a huge insult.

"Isn't that what I said? Come on, dude, even you have to admit talking isn't her strong point."

"Wait, since when? Sonja, you didn't complete your sentence." Mai turned her blind face over to where she thought Sonja would be.

"It's nothing," said her low voice. "None of our business."

"Oh, come on, Sonja, it's not like we're going to gossip it around to all the boys," said Mandy with a short, humorless bark of laughter.

"And Mai has a right to know, now, doesn't she?" said Amanda, in an already out of character grimness.

"Know what?"

The hands slowed for a bit, and for a moment Mai felt desperate to see her surroundings—to see their faces. But her eyes had given up on being used and only allowed her a blurry glimpse of sparkling motes in the streaks of sunshine before they glued shut once more.

Sonja's fingers left her fins.

"Don't tell Jamie," said the Cherokee quite near to her ear.

"I won't."

"No, for reals, don't even mention it," said Mandy.

"I already said I wouldn't, now stop it with all the suspense and just tell me!"

But it was Amanda's little voice that responded.

"Jamie had a merbaby while she was here. With her companion. She wasn't always so hard to talk to, really. And it's mostly our fault, since we don't know what to say."

Mandy snorted once more. "What _do_ you say?"

Mai's mouth dropped. "That's—what happened? Wait, mermaids can have babies with humans? Where's the baby?"

"That's the thing," said Mandy. "We don't know. They took her away right after she was born. We were there. We helped her give birth."

All sorts of discomforting tingles crawled through Mai's blood. Always about babies with this place, why was it always babies?

"They…wait, you said merbaby, does that mean…?"

"Yeah. She was born underwater, fins and all," said Mandy.

"She was so perfect," said Amanda, almost in a whisper.

"A-a-and they just…took her away?"

"Well how do you think the rest of us got here?" said Sonja, though not angrily, just sadly. "Why do you think all our companions are male?"

"Wait, they're all—I hadn't—"

"Of course you hadn't, we haven't even told you about ours yet. But that's what you need to know, Mai. Don't get close to your companion. Don't even think about it."

In the stunned silence that followed after, Mandy topped off her statement with a quiet, snarled "bastards."


	18. Well, I'm Turned Off

**Luigi's Mansion theme stuck in my head...**

 **Also, I have just read the fine print to my book publishing. Apparently, even if the release date is October 3rd, it's still going to take a few more weeks to get to the stores. T.T Dummies. Why do they have to take so long! But, besides that, enjoy.**

Chapter 17

 _"_ _As a marine biologist, I can tell you unequivocally that despite millennia of humans exploring the ocean, no credible evidence of the existence of mermaids has ever been found." - David Shiffman,_ No, Mermaids Do Not Exist _,_

After the paperwork, Kazuya had lunch with three other men in an underwater observatory of the aquarium. They introduced themselves as companions to three of the other mermaids, though didn't say anything about the fourth, which should have been there, other than 'well, Jamie doesn't need one.' Since it had been implied to him that all of the mermaids needed companions, he summed it up to 'well, she must be getting close to being useless,' and left it at that.

He hardly tasted the food. He barely heard any of the talk. His mind was abuzz with the little flaps that let in metal arms into Mai and his cell along with any other possible routes for squeezing out a mermaid through top-notch security. He'd be locked up in with her most of the time as her companion, so he'd have to work from there, but there would be a few opportunities for him to examine the rest of the facility. With how large the place was, it surprised him he hadn't been given or seen a map. So far, the mental one he had started to create in his head consisted of the aquarium, the observatory of which he sat in, the hall of cells, that aquarium (or the bay that had been sectioned off for the mermaids to swim about in like the goldfish they were), and the meeting room which he and Dr. Tim had met up in. The rest of the halls and rooms of seaweed cultures blurred together in his mind like a rat's nest. Genius he may be, but he had always been more than normal when it came to directions.

He was just starting his list of to-dos in his scheme when movement in the blue, sunlit water of the aquarium caught his eye.

Glittering new pennies. Clashing red fabric. And long, flowing, skirt-like fins.

Kazuya lowered whatever tripe he had been putting into his mouth.

She met his eye through the glass and dove down to his level, though she didn't look excited. Rather she had a mournful tilt to her mouth that worried him. Without a thought to the other men, who were asking him if that was 'his mermaid,' he stood and went up to the glass, though he knew it was too thick to speak through. It was as though all the pent up frustration and energy he had been storing through the day suddenly released in that moment just so he could stand before her.

She came to his level, bruised brown eyes sad. Her hands tread water as her bustles of fin coasted along the currents.

He gave her a questioning look and made it a point to frown. She shook her head, as though to tell him 'not now,' before closing her sore eyes and allowing herself to float away.

"Woa,"

For the first time, he gave his full attention to the other companions, who all had their eyes on the copper mermaid slipping back into the waters, where three others waited. When they noticed him looking, one with bright ginger hair and smothered in freckles grinned and pointed his thumb towards the water.

"Never seen fins on one like that before. You got a looker with curves too, lucky."

That irritated him. "She's not something to be gawked at, you cud."

All three flinched, and the ears of the ginger reddened. One with a face Kazuya thought he had seen on a cologne commercial once threw his hands into the air.

"It was a compliment!" he said.

But Kazuya had always made it a point to avoid the company of idiots, and the brief thirty seconds of communication had been enough to tell him these three reeked of it. Without another glance, he tossed his jacket over his shoulder and headed to the door, where he knew two security guards waited with their belts hung with weapons like Christmas baubles.

He wondered about in what he could see of the facility (the whole invisible door design made it difficult to see where he was going), before one of the guards trailing after him received a message that Mai had returned to her chambers and had need for her companion.

He had gathered enough for that day to think on. Before the guard handed him off to the ambient space of the ocean lit room, he asked about the books and materials he had asked for. The guard checked his walkie talkie and got a short message of 'in the morning' from the cellophanic voice of Dr. Tim.

Then the door hissed closed and vanished into the walls.

Mai sat with her still pink, tender legs folded underneath her and a fresh red gown—luckily one that looked less like it came from a hospital and more like a summer dress, covered back included. She kept her bruised eyes closed. Automatically, he reached for the little white container of balm.

"Eyes still hurting?"

She said nothing, even after he sat down in front of her on the bed. Frowning, he popped open the jar and loaded his fingers. When he reached out to apply them to the tender flesh, she flinched, but didn't pull away. A nearly inaudible sigh of relief escaped her.

"I can do that myself," she said, so low he almost didn't hear.

But he just loaded up more onto his fingertips and returned to her eyes. "What did you learn?"

"Stuff I want to forget."

This gave him pause. "Well, you're going to need to tell me anyways. Once we're out of here, I'm going to need every clue I can get to find mermaid metropolis, or whatever it is."

"You don't need these."

He wasn't up to arguing. "Fine, then tell me what you do think is useful."

When she remained quiet, he believed her being stubborn and carefully finished up with the balm. The clack of the lid on the jar seemed to jerk her back to the conversation.

"A mermaid can mate with a human and still give birth to a merbaby."

His eyebrows rose. "Now, there's something. Though there has to be some explanation as to how these bastards manage to breed their mermaids without cloning. I always thought they had a merman stashed away." He stood, leaving the jar on the night stand, his eyes to the walls. This thought truly was intriguing, for if the offspring of a human and mermaid union wasn't infertile, that would mean it wasn't a hybrid of two species. Rather, the human and mermaid were at least of the same species kingdom, and what made a mermaid different from a human was a simple matter of dominant and recessive genes. And if the Triple A just had to breed any human with a mermaid to get the desired product-

His thoughts crashed shut.

He had just been thinking how strange and oddly inappropriate it was that all of the companions had been male.

Which meant he was expected to…

Shit.

There had probably been something in the fine print of that stupid paperwork that said something about any children he should conceive off a mermaid being the property of the company. Probably in that stupid section on 'family care' that he had skipped over. He had just supposed it had to do with inane things like maternal leave and daycare options, and they had probably intended it that way. And to think they actually succeeded in pulling one over him, Kazuya Shibuya, who could probably outthink all their little minds into a bucket.

He swore again, this time out loud. He needed to verify this. This was just too big not to mention as part of his job as 'companion.' How could they have simply not mentioned this?

"Was some of that stuff you didn't want to say have to do with mermaids having babies with their companions?"

She didn't even jump. She just sighed. "Wow, aren't you a genius."

"What the hell…"

"Yep. So," she turned her closed eyes to him. "How about we not get it on and call it good?"

Usually, such a statement would be responded to with his normal cool, academic face. But, as it had been doing of late, everything in him rebelled and sent a flush of warmth to his neck. Nevertheless, he just huffed, determined to ignore whatever insanity seeing a mermaid had unleashed on him.

"Since the thought repulsed me the moment it crossed my mind, I doubt we need to worry," he said.

He expected her to be offended. He fully expected to see her face light up with passion. It was only when it remained the same dead expression she had had that he realized he missed her passion. So willing to rise to a fight…who does that anymore? Doesn't she know how humiliating it is to wear your emotions on your sleeves like that? How uncouth, inappropriate, and wild it was?

How rare?

Especially in his cool, sterile world of professionals and facts.

"I want to go home," she said, quiet and matter-of-fact. "But I don't have one."

She was complaining. But rather than be annoyed, he only felt confused. It was true. He had nailed it into her face himself—even that Dr. Tim had used that fact as an excuse to reason withholding mermaids into this damn hellhole. But it had never occurred to him how…sad…

So? It wasn't like he or she could do anything about it. Not now, anyways. And nothing he could say would fix it either.

But you could always get what you want with hard work. And every prison could be broken out of.

With new determination, he knelt down besides the bed in order to meet her eyes, should she choose to open them.

"Mai, listen very carefully to me. That aquarium connects to the ocean, right?"

"You can't escape. There's this thick cage that goes over what little of the bay is open, and then the rest is this huge cement damn that goes up forever and turns into even bigger walls that surround the bay. And you can't dig underneath it either, because the cement goes down really deep. Sonja told me that if you even try, there's this big bar of sorts that will electrocute you."

"How do they know this?"

"Jamie's been trying to escape ever since her baby…"

Kazuya didn't need to hear the rest. "Can you get close to Jamie, then? See what she knows?"

"She—I—sure, I guess." Her pink lips frowned and she turned her face just a bit more towards him. "Naru, why are you saying these things? Can't you just get out and ask your parents to help? Aren't they rich or something?"

"No one is rich enough to buy out the government."

Mai's eyebrows flew up. "This place is run by the government? Of the USA? Well, can't they send in super spies or something to help us out?"

"You're forgetting the fact that they'd have to believe me and then actually be willing to risk the consequences of breaking into an ultra secret government funded organization that's been around for at least fifty years. No. I think my plan will work better."

"What could work better? Look, if you're thinking of punching through to the ocean, I don't think that's possible."

"You forget," and with this, he couldn't help a very self-satisfied smirk spread across his cheeks. "I specialize in proving the impossible possible."


	19. We Always Need Mom--and Drowning

**This chapter makes me miss my mom. I think I'll call her this evening. She was always so inappropriate, but she had the most beautiful singing voice. She taught me to sing, you know, all the techniques and all that. She has fought with chronic depression all my life, but she didn't let it rule her. Whenever it got especially bad she'd load us up in the car and go for drives where she'd sing. She'd sing slow, blue jazz, folks songs, pop, songs from musicals (mostly Chess), and when she was in an especially good mood, she'd make up stupid lyrics to whatever and than laugh at her own cleverness, though we just rolled our eyes. Whenever I even hinted that I thought she might not love me, she'd give me the most terrifying glare and say,**

 **"I pushed you out of my vagina and I will always love you, no matter what, and if I ever hear you say that I don't I will slap you!"**

 **And not knowing whether or not to laugh or scream in fear, I'd just apologize and say I loved her too.**

 **Here's to my mom.**

Chapter 18

 _"_ _Next you will come to the Sirens who beguile all men that approach them. Whoever encounters them unawares and listens to their voices will never joy at reaching home, his wife and children to greet him. Instead the Sirens' tempt him with their limpid song, as they sit there in the meadow with a vast heap of mouldering corpses, bones on which hangs the shriveled skin."-The Odyssey_

For one of the few times in the past year, Mai's mother crept back into her thoughts.

She put up a fight to keep the wall up for a while. After all, Naru the arrogant narcissist and emotionally challenged scientist of the century still lay in the bed next to her, and she didn't want him even getting hint that she might be wallowing in misery. Not to mention she had had more than enough of her fair share of misery since coming to this place.

But that's exactly why mother snuck through. Maybe misery called to misery. Maybe, when you're sad, your brain just likes to automatically shuffle through everything sad, just to make it more complete.

So come she did, and with her hands full of pebbles, gleaming with river water in the sun like little polished jewels.

"We can put them in our bellybuttons," she had said, her too-young face already half-way through a laugh. "They'll be our new jewelry. We'll make millions."

Of course she hadn't been serious. Mother had been a dreamer, and thus they spent the day away along the river—Mai couldn't even remember its name—picking out pebbles of different colors and sticking them in their bellybuttons. They had laughed a lot, then sang old folk songs from her mother's high school days till they got hungry and turned in for the night. Their sunburns had been awful and her mother had returned to being a mom that evening when she slathered aloe over her daughter's sore back.

She had been far too young to die. Only thirty-three, having had Mai in high school. She was suppose to remarry, have more babies, and nag Mai for the rest of her life about staying away from boys and going to church every Sunday.

Mai threw an arm over her eyes as she sucked in a slow, aching breath.

Oh yes. God. He existed, didn't He? Did He create mermaids as well? Though Naru had said something about mermaids just being another strain of humans, so she suppose He had. But no, she wasn't about to wonder why God would let her suffer this much, because what would life be if there wasn't any suffering? No one would ever learn compassion, no one would ever need friends to support them, and don't even get started on how useless family and love would be if you never needed anything, because you always had what you wanted.

Without suffering, there'd be nothing. Just a bunch of floating, useless bodies who ate, slept, pooped, and never knew how to dream because they didn't have a nightmare to compare it to.

But…she did kind of wish He'd hurry up on this particular episode. Mother, mermaid breeders, and the confusing crap which was Naru, or more specifically, Kazuya.

Yes, that's right, let's forget mother for a minute. Naru. Naru the narcissist, but, oddly, not wanting to be a narcissist. It had all been much simpler when she could hate him without guilt, but the courageous way in which he had stood up to the sailor and lied about her had been the start of it. Or had it been the strawberry milkshake? She didn't know.

But there had definitely been something in the way he had touched her sore eyes and the conversation that had started.

He didn't want to be uncompassionate. He wanted to understand. And somewhere, in his words, she thought she caught a glimpse of someone awfully lonely, but too use to it to realize it. Who knew such a brilliant, logical brain could also be a curse, because emotions and the human soul weren't logical—people proved that every day. To live one's life in the cold, sterile world of logic would be just that: icy, lonely, and beyond baffling.

Of course, he couldn't be that sad of a creature. He still had his emotions, she had seen that much, with how he swore and tossed the bed. Good Lord, you'd think the fellow had never had to deal with so much anger in his life. But…maybe he hadn't. It wasn't like you came upon a situation like this every Monday.

And yet his fingers had been so kind, so soft, so earnest in their desire to be gentle…

 _Don't get close._

But he was too smart to be used like that. And it wasn't like Naru, the rich ass narcissist, could ever find himself attracted to a normal, plain, bland girl like her. She even had stretch marks on her calves and thighs from puberty, and even with her transformations, she still had cellulite covering the back of her thighs.

And, of course, mother returned with that.

 _'_ _I gave you those legs, and if a boy ever doesn't love you because of your thighs than I hope he never comes near you. The only boy who should even have a chance to think about your thighs should be your husband. Why are you even thinking about this crap anyways?'_

Don't talk to me, Mom. You're supposed to be dead. Dead dead and gone and totally screwing it up on this whole mermaid thing.

But Mai already knew one thing was true. Her mother had given birth to her. She bragged about pushing Mai out of her vagina at the most inopportune moments, and when Mai least wanted to hear about it. She'd even yank up her shirt and showed her all the stretch marks Mai had given her, as though they were a badge of honor for birthing a girl in high school.

And yet mom had always insisted she would do it all over again if asked to, and to never, ever think that Mai had been a mistake.

Mai had always wondered why her mother had been so insistent on proving Mai was her daughter. It was the dumbest thing ever. But now? Not so much.

If mom had been here now…

No, not going to think that. It was a stupid question with an even stupider answer.

If mom had been here, Mai wouldn't be here. Mai would be back by the river, putting pebbles in her bellybutton and finally hearing the long lost story of her father. Mother had always promised, didn't she? Always promised to tell.

Mai didn't realize she had started to cry until she found she couldn't breathe through her nose. The ointment the scientist had given Naru to put on her eyes had numbed them, so she hadn't felt the burn or the normal, salty tears trickling down her face.

"Damn it," she muttered, reaching around for a tissue. "Dummy, there's none here. Bathroom. Bathroom."

She had creaked open her eyes one too many times that day, so she only got a glimpse through her clotted lashes of the orientation of the room before they sealed shut again. Zombie-like, she tottered with her arms outstretched to the bathroom door. She didn't bother for the lights, but found the tissue paper.

When her nose sounded off like a trumpet on being blown, she winced, but no sound came from the bedroom.

But of course, like Naru would care if she was crying. Her eyes are screwed up and she's in a place where they force choke opals out of your eyeballs, it wasn't like crying was going to be that unique of a thing. And if he did catch her crying, he'd only say something insensitive, like, "Well, why don't you do something about it?" or "Crying isn't going to do anything to change your situation, so get over it."

If he was like that towards everyone, he had to be lonely. Any human being would be.

A familiar hiss brought her out of her thoughts, and light shown through her closed lids.

"Mai? Will you come here, please."

The rubber stranger. She knew their voice, all right.

Trying not to look like a complete derp, she dropped the tissue and stood tall as she stepped through the bathroom door.

"What do you want?" she asked, none-too-kindly.

"Just to check your vitals and your eyes."

"Sure you are. Just get on to the threats of 'if I don't' already."

"Now, Mai, that's unfair. We're doing everything we can to ensure your welfare and happiness. I'm not going to threaten you. I'm just going to wait here until you are ready."

Mai's feet felt awfully cold against the tile floor. She locked her knees tight when they tried to betray her anxiety.

A rustle of bedclothes and the soft pad of bare feet on the floor.

"What's the meaning of this? Her eyes aren't healed yet."

"Exactly what I said, Mr. Shibuya. We just need to check her vitals and how her eyes are healing."

Mai sniffed and lifted her chin in false bravado. "Why does he get to be Mr. Shibuya and I'm just Mai?"

"Stop being petty and just go," said Naru.

She flinched. That hurt more than most. Wasn't he on her side? "Naru?"

"They're not going to hurt you. Believe it or not, but your health is their main concern. You can trust me on this one."

"Would it help you feel better if Mr. Shibu—I mean, Kazuya came with you?"

Yes, it did. But it didn't help when the rubber stranger offered it. Everything they said just screamed 'liar!' There would be needles, there would be pain, there had to be.

But Naru…Naru had said he was going to get them out of here. He had told her he could do the impossible. He had touched her fragile, injured eyes so tenderly…

"Okay. If he comes, okay."

"There's a good girl. Keep your eyes closed, no need to open them on my account. Would you rather Kazuya or I lead you?"

"Kazuya."

She stood awkwardly, and more than just a little afraid, with her feet spreading wider and wider on that cold, cold floor until a warm, soft hand wrapped around hers. She could feel those same fingers that had touched her so gently. His hand was firm, but not unkind. How was it that he could act and sound so heartless, but communicate the opposite in his touch?

He led her into brighter light, which hurt her eyes even through her closed lids. The floor stayed cold, and no one offered her shoes. Mermaids didn't need shoes.

She tried to calm her unease by taking in the sounds of the outside world of her cell: the thrum of a cooling system, the pitter patter of feet, the murmur of distant voices. Now and then she heard a beep, maybe a tinkle of electronics. It was like listening to a very quiet hospital that smelled of chlorine and new carpet.

"Any chance I could have the details on this particular examination?"

"We prefer to take her vitals as a mermaid as well as human, so we will be testing her platelet, white blood cell, and sugar levels as well as the rest of the basics. Should take thirty minutes, at most. Dr. Tim would also like to administer a light sedative, as he understands the unfamiliar surroundings have been making it difficult for her to sleep."

Understatement of the century.

"Any side affects to this sedative?"

"Other than the usual, no. We've already tested her for allergies to our medications. It will only help her sleep, I assure you."

"Don't assure me. I'm only asking for her so I don't have to hear her ask me the same stupid questions, but for all I know you people don't mind lying to me as much as her."

"Really, we mean you no harm. I only left out some things on her first admittance so as to not frighten her. I believed the shock to be easier to bear than the trepidation. It also helps the first time to be a bit surprised."

Naru made a dismissive grunt. "Whatever. Can I have some tea while I wait?"

"Of course."

"Earl gray, if you would."

The hospital noises came back. Mai gave Naru's hand a light squeeze. Her fingers were so cold. All of her was so cold. If only his warm hand could give away its heat to her, or wrap around her like a blanket.

What a strange thought.

When she once more heard a hiss and a wave of humid air, she forced open her tender eyes.

Once more, they brought her into the dark chamber of the cylinder tank and blue light, though this time there were fewer glassy goggled faces and white lab coats. Only one other waited at the board of dials and screens.

Mai slipped back into blindness once more.

"If you'd just come this way, Mai."

But on seeing that tank glowing iridescently blue in the dark, her knees had frozen together. She squeezed Naru's hand.

When she continued to make no sign of moving, Naru gave her a gentle tug.

"Come on. The sooner this is over with, the sooner you can go to sleep. You could use it."

She wanted to retort back that how the hell should he know that, but whatever rock had lodged itself in her throat only let by a squeak. Naru tugged hard enough to unstuck her knees, though, and she stumbled forward till the tops of her feet hit the first step to the platform above the tank.

"I don't want you to watch," she pushed out.

"Then I'll turn around," he said.

"How do I know I can trust you?"

"Mai," but he stopped. After a few more moments, all he did was squeeze her hand back and nudge her up the stairs. But her knees had frozen together again.

"Would you like him to go with you?"

Her head snapped towards the voice of the rubber stranger besides them. Naru made a strange little noise in his throat. Before she could wonder how that would work, she choked out a strangled 'yes!' She could almost feel his scowl on her neck.

"This way, Mr. Shibuya. Hurry now, we have some trunks in the back you can use."

Ten minutes later, Mai was dangling over the top of the tank with Naru's bare shins just touching her shoulder.

"The water is at a balanced, saline solution, so you should have no problem seeing just fine, but just in case we've deposited some goggles near the gas mask at the bottom. You received your instructions?"

"Yes," said Naru, and Mai's scales prickled in alarm. Instructions? Was he suppose to help them in her torture? But no, the shock had gone through the whole tank. They couldn't get opals out of her while he was in there, or could they?

"Whenever you are ready, you two."

Of course she wasn't ready. She could already feel the pain of the transformation prickling up her toes in the water.

Once more, Naru nudged her, gently this time.

"They're not going to hurt you. I'll make sure of it."

And because she had no one else to believe, and because she was so desperate to at least trust him, Mai slipped off the platform and into the too clear water once more.

The pain came sharp and quick as a scalpel. Her legs snapped together, muscles snaked about her, scales crawled up to her waist. But just as the scream escaped her throat, the transformation was finished, and she was sinking, eyes clenched tightly shut.

A splash, and Naru's warm arms caught her just as she reached the bottom. He lowered her down before paddling away to a corner, where the gas mask was sure to be. She didn't know how long she waited there, curled up from the aches of change and uncertainty. The electric voice of the rubber stranger talked with Naru over that strange underwater speaker, and she let Naru lead her arm to a familiar metal ring. Bubbles from his moving feet tickled her sides and face.

When a needle pricked her arm, she opened her eyes wide in alarm. The site of the syringe rammed her rigid with alarm. Just as she whipped out her long tail and fins from beneath her to fight, Naru's hands fell on her shoulders. He couldn't speak with the mask on, so he had to give her a gentle squeeze. Then, to be sure she didn't fight against the needle, he started to massage her.

It was the strangest thing to ever happen to her yet. Forget being a mermaid in some mad scientist's tank. Arrogant, selfish Naru was giving her a shoulder massage?

Well, they had probably pressured him into making sure she kept calm. It was apparently his job as her companion, after all.

But as she forced her sore eyes open to watch the syringe push its contents into her veins, her eyes started to ache less and her muscles relaxed. Her head started to float, light as a feather, and her tail curled back in. Had the skirts of her fins always been so fascinating?

And now Naru was rubbing her arms.

The ring let her go. She was falling to the floor of the tank, but she could keep her eyes open. She could finally see the rubber stranger through the glass, and they looked like a medieval monster, or a World War Two soldier prepared for mustard gas.

It reminded her of a song Mom used to sing, and the thought made her giggle. The sensation of mirth felt so pleasant, she giggled once more. Before she knew it she was softly singing to herself, not caring if Naru heard her horrible voice.

" _Ground control to Major Tom, ground control to Major Tom_ ,"

Majors were in the army, right? What were the rest of the lyrics?

" _Take your protein pills and put your helmet on…ground control to Major Tom_."

And since she couldn't remember the rest of the words, and because the hum of her loosened throat reached down to the bottom of her lungs, she just sung the various ways in which Major Tom could fit into the melody playing through her head.

She could hear herself. It must be this strange loopiness they'd put over her, because she sounded nice. Very nice. Like Jamie, whose voice had stopped being a voice and had become an angelic sound.

Naru's hands had stopped. When had they stopped?

The underwater speaker crackled.

"Shut her up, quick!"

But Naru didn't move. The rubber stranger was thumping on the side of the tank. Major Tom. He probably didn't look like that rubber monstrosity at all. He probably wore those nice, pretty black army suits covered in medals. He was in the army, right? Wasn't there a line about space?

A metal arm came up from the bottom of the tank. Its fingers splayed out, much like a claw in one of those grab game machines.

Naru had slipped away. She couldn't feel him anymore. The claw reached past her and, curious, she followed its course to find Naru watching her with glassy eyes and the strangest look of rapture upon his face. She didn't think he could have a face like that, and she knew then she had to be dreaming.

But dreaming or not, he didn't have his mask on, and big bubbles rose from his open mouth like little worlds of reflected sky and glass.

He didn't have his mask on.

And he wasn't going up for air.

Through the relaxed, dream-like state, she woke up with a shock of electricity. Now her muscles weren't relaxed, they were like lead, and her heart thudded heavily to try and wake up. She reached to him, his name on her lips.

The metal hand caught his arm, just as his eyes rolled up into the back of his head. How long had he been without the mask? Did her singing make him do that? But why? She had always been such an awful singer. But had that been her? That sound?

Naru slipped from her arms in a wave of bubbles to the waiting rubber stranger on top, who hung over the door with outstretched black arms. She swam up to him, wearily, heavily, to help, suddenly terrified that she had drowned him. But then more metal arms came up from the bottom to wrap around her wrists and pull her down. She was left to watch helplessly as the rubber person pulled him out and away from her sight.

What had she done?


	20. Because Mermaids Can't Be Hot? Pfft

**Today is the release date for my debut novel, though I'm finding that doesn't necessarily mean it's hit the book sellers yet (the publishers failed to tell me that so now I've got a lot of corrections with readers to make). It just means it's up for sale from the printer. The book sellers have to review it before their good with it, so that's going to be three more weeks *groan*.**

 **So, if any of you are interested, check out my profile for a link to the printer, which means you'll get it cheaper anyways because you won't have to pay a bookseller (Amazon, Barnes and Nobles, etc), for selling it to you. Also, as always, feel free to PM or email me (email is tayslowe gmail ) for whatever reason. It's not like I have many people to talk to up here in the boonies.**

 **For synopsis of what my book's about, check out my profile. I think you guys especially will like it, though, as it's a time-traveling romance set in Ancient Egypt. ) Muwahahaha.**

 _ **But besides all that, enjoy this extra update from me to you, with love, and tortured mermaids. Thanks for all your reviews! I love each and every one of them, especially the funny ones. They make my day.**_

Chapter 19

 _"_ _Rusalkas [Russian version of mermaids] are said to inhabit lakes and rivers. They appear as beautiful young women with long pale green hair and pale skin, suggesting a connection with floating weeds and days spent underwater in faint sunlight. They can be seen after dark, dancing together under the moon and calling out to young men by name, luring them to the water and drowning them." -_ _Linda J. Ivanits in her book, 'Russian Folk Belief'_

Kazuya came to hacking and vomiting water till his throat had been rubbed raw. Even then his head still spun somewhere up in space, drunk in euphoria, like he had taken some illegal drug. Even as he struggled for breath and endured the hard thumps on his back from the suited assistant, he planned on crawling back into the tank, sinking to the bottom, and drugging himself senseless with the sound of Mai's voice. He didn't even know what song she had been singing, but it had reminded him of home. It was nostalgia in pure sound, beautiful, full of longing, and rich with a mother's love.

Mai had gone from merely pretty to resplendent in his arms till she became the song itself, and he had unwittingly opened his mouth to breathe it in. He had forgotten that he was underwater. In fact, it had completely escaped his mind that there was a difference between breathing air and water, and had torn off the mask in disgust. He had probably looked like an idiot in front of Mai, who had turned from mermaid to gorgeous goddess whose fish tail had turned into a flowing dress of brilliant copper silk.

But as hands smacked him back to awareness and he heard that same voice groggily crying out his name, the scientist's part of him woke up to what had just happened to him.

And when the pain of his abused throat broke in, he swore.

The rubber man was laughing. They had to be a man. A really skinny man? The scientist at the control panel had come over when Kazuya had been plopped back onto the floor, and he could just make out the other's smile beneath his goggles. Why did they wear those anyways?

"Should have warned you about that," said the scientist, adjusting said goggles. "I didn't think she'd start singing with you in there. Most girls avoid singing at all costs, having grown up above water."

"Above water?" Kazuya rasped.

"They sound absolutely awful as humans," said the scientist.

"Sometimes awful as mermaids too," said the rubber man. "So they usually don't risk it. So sorry."

"What the hell just happened?"

"Ever heard of sirens? You know, from the Odyssey? Course you have, you study that sort of thing, don't you? Well, mermaids were always thought to be cousins of sirens. Except, rather than singing your boat into the rocks, the song of a mermaid has the strangest result of causing a grown adult of the opposite sex—usually men—to be overwhelmed with the urge to go to them. And since mermaids are underwater, well…that usually results in drowning."

"Wow, I wouldn't have guessed." Kazuya coughed out more water, then reached about for something to pull himself up with. "I better get back in there." Mai's voice was still mewling his name from within the tank.

"We're just about done. Why don't you stay out here to help catch her? She's going to have to go back to her room to change back this time."

"Whatever, just hurry it up. I'm freezing." Which was only partial lie, as a small part of him still urged him to go back to her. Breathing water couldn't be as hard as breathing air. But _that wasn't right_ , damn it. How long did that song stick around in your ears?

It was still sticking when he climbed up to crouch around the door to the tank. He almost had to stop himself from jumping back in, dry clothes and all. The metal arms pulled her limp form to them, and when her head broke the water she lifted up her face to give him a sleepy, half-lidded relieved smile that did chaos to his stomach.

What was wrong with him?

They gave him a huge towel to wrap her up in, as though she were freshly born. He carried her with the help of the suited man back to the room, where he was left with another towel to pad her down. The rubber stranger returned with a small cart filled with books, a small stack of paper, and a collection of pens.

"Your requested materials came in, Mr. Shibuya."

Kazuya nodded, and he left him to the dark, softly bubbling room.

Then he smiled. Now he was in business. Once he covered Mai's tail with the blanket for privacy when she changed, he left her to sleep for his books. He had to be clever when his choices, as he couldn't have them catching on. All of the titles connected to nautical research, but more specifically the electrical tools involved in nautical research—mixed in with some books on whales and currents and all that crap. Couldn't be too obvious. And he couldn't gamble too much on the assumption that these books hadn't been skimmed through before being handed off to him.

Tearing out some paper from the plastic wrap, Kazuya took his place on his bed with his first choice and a red herring—just in case they were watching in. He could hardly contain his excitement when the first page he opened to had a diagram of wiring and computer chip break downs. They were for programming the hardware and software of sonograms and not the mechanical workings of the aqua bunker, granted, but wires and computers all worked the same, right? The hardware, at least. Electricity in, electricity out, clicky here and clicky there.

 _Time to become an electrical engineer,_ he thought to himself. After reading a few paragraphs, he already knew he wouldn't be getting much sleep tonight and licked his thumb to pull some of the scratch paper towards him. The pen wasn't the thick point he preferred, but it would work. Writing always helped him think.

The little digital clock in the corner of the screen-like walls told him it was midnight by the time he finally finished with milking all he could learn of electronics out of that book and moved on to the next. Just to shake things up, he perused a bit through the red herring book (about the biology of coral reefs), before cracking open the next. This one was going to be even better, as it had to do with the different mechanics of boats one could use for deep sea exploration. There was bound to be something on mechanical arms in there.

A little sigh distracted him. Mai had shifted in her sleep, and from the movement under the blankets, her legs had come back. He had been too engrossed in his reading to notice when that had happened.

He tried to just go back to his reading, but found himself suddenly drawn, almost curious, about her face and the thin plates of scales on her forearm. Her copper-brown hair was messy, as she hadn't seen a brush since they met, but it hugged the curves of her cheekbones and the fans of her lashes.

The sound of her singing echoed from his memory and he shook himself. He didn't have time to get caught up in that again. The sooner they were out, the better.

But as though the song was a key, more memories floated up to him: the way she clung onto him as they made their way to the tank, the way she faced her closed, bruised eyes to him, trusting him, needing him.

She was pathetic.

And yet…when had anyone actually _needed_ him? Wanted him, yes. But to look at him as…emotional support? Kazuya was no emotional support, and yet, with Mai, he had somehow became just that.

When he found himself reading over the same sentence without taking in a word of it, he gave up, took his book and note paper, and slipped off his bed. He didn't get into her bed, but rather he sat down at the side where her hand dangled off. He resisted the sudden, ridiculous urge to kiss it and forced himself to look back to his studies. Somehow, the sound of her easy breathing helped him to slip back into the words.

And then her fingers found his hair.

The diagrams of boats and wires crashed as he stiffened. Her hand didn't move. She had just shifted in her sleep and her fingers had found a warm place against his scalp, nestled in his thick black hair. Trying to ignore the chills that the tip of her nails gave him, he struggled to go back to reading. It took him a few minutes, but he managed to get back into it once more with the help of her soft breathing.

It was only when he finished that book at three fifteen that a thought drifted through from the part of his brain he had done his best to ignore. It was the part that dwelt on the way this mermaid affected his actions and the ways he hung on to the little new things he was learning about her, such as her passion and ferocity, as well as the little hand that nestled in his hair.

 _This is too easy._

It was too easy to be attached to her. He barely knew her when other women he had dated had months, years, to earn his affections and still failed. He had always prided himself on never being the type to 'fall in love,' always believing love to be a practice of dedicated trust and choice, but Mai had shoved all of that away in leaps and bounds. It couldn't be just her. It couldn't be just the fact she was a mermaid either, because he wasn't a child like that. It had to do something with the situation—

And it hit him. The suffering, the urge he had to protect her, the enclosed space, how the people offered and even urged him to go along with her, to try and comfort her, to be her sole defender…

He had heard of this. Two people in an extreme situation believe the intensity of their emotions to be love. How clever, how very diabolically clever. No wonder he felt so attracted to her. This was all the clever, psychological manipulation of those bastards to try and use him as some stud for mating mermaids.

And yet, from that same ignored part of his brain came the small note that there was nothing intense about finding such peace and ease of mind from Mai's content breathing. There was nothing intense about feeling like a blanket kept him warm whenever he thought of how she was safe and healthy in this moment.

But, as he always so easily did, he ignored it. It had given him the only thing he was interested in, and that was new clues to the mastermind which was the workings of the Triple A.

Because no one ever got a hand over Kazuya Shibuya. Like hell he'd have sex with Mai just because they wanted it. Like hell he'd 'fall' in love.


	21. Gotta Swim With Yer Boys

**Thinking I'll give up on Ghostwriting. It's driving me nuts to write stuff for other people to take credit for, and it seems like I'm making it possible for them to be dishonest, don't you think? Not to mention I'd rather spend the time writing my own stories.**

 **And it's one of those smash your face into the pillow and groan days...*sigh* Hope you guys are doing better. *face smash in pillow***

Chapter 20

 _"But the sailors could not understand the song, they took it for the howling of the storm. And these things were never to be beautiful for them; for if the ship sank, the men were drowned, and their dead bodies alone reached the palace of the Sea King."—Hans Christian Anderson,_ The Little Mermaid

Mai's eyes had healed by the time she woke up. After breakfast, which tasted better than the breakfast's of old, both she and a bleary eyed Naru were escorted to the aquarium. Lazy and at ease, probably because the sedative still floated in her system, she dropped into the water and floated through the sting of transforming. When she opened her eyes, three familiar mermaids swam up to great her in shades of purple, blue, and red.

"It's Wednesday!" chirped Amanda.

Mandy smacked her arm in a fan of bubbles. "Don't sound so excited! We're not suppose to be excited."

"What? What's with Wednesday?" Mai looked to Sonja, as the Amanda's were still in the midst of their little…whatever it was. Friendly fight?

The Cherokee also had a small smile on her face, which shaded her cinnamon cheeks with a golden glow. Her long black hair floated above her like a living headdress. "On Wednesdays our companions get to swim with us. Dr. Tim considers social interaction on all levels important to our health."

Mai looked back at the dock where she had just lazily stepped off to see the rippling dark image of Naru as he talked with three other young men and a tall, familiar white coated older man. Without thinking much about it, she sank lower in the water. Sonja followed her with an understanding grimace.

"It's alright. None of us much like him either."

"I think he's alright!" said Amanda.

"You'd think Hitler was alright if you ever met him!"

"You're just mean, Mandy! Besides, Hitler had to have something likable about him to make all of Germany follow him like that."

Sonja nudged Mai's arm gently. "You should probably go up. Dr. Tim will want to tell you the rules before he'll let your companion in."

Mai bit her lip and looked to the side. "I'm not entirely sure Naru will want to come in. Not after what happened…"

Sonja cocked her head to the side in question, but a crackle of an underwater speaker caught their attention.

"Girls, I'm sure all of you know the rules already, so would you please send Mai up?"

Reluctantly, Mai floated back to the surface with her hands twisted up in her flimsy, red dress. Even then, she kept her distance from the white coated balding man, who had crouched himself on the indoor dock as though coaxing a small animal or a child to him. His practiced smile told her nothing about what he truly thought.

"Can you hear me from there Mai?"

She nodded.

"I'm sure the girls have already told you about Wednesdays and Sundays, but we've got some rules you need to follow while the boys are in there, all right? Just to keep them safe."

Besides him, the boys in question muttered to themselves while glancing sidelong at Naru, who was the only one of the four who wasn't in swimming trunks. He ignored them in his usual aloof way, with his chin raised, pointed away, and his arms crossed over his chest.

"Mai, pay attention, these are very important. If you break any of them you could hurt someone."

Mai turned her eyes back to the blank faced scientist. He nodded and lifted up his fingers as he counted off.

"Rule number one: no singing. I'm sure after your mishap yesterday you'll understand why."

It felt like he had just poured ice over her head. Sedated or not, she remembered. How could she forget? Naru's euphoric look had been…disturbing.

"Two: No horse play. Just because you three or strong swimmers doesn't mean you can carry a grown man back here by yourselves. Best to not risk it."

She almost snorted to herself. She had dragged Naru several miles through the ocean on her own. She could see some concern in tiny blond Amanda's department though.

"And finally, no more than two hours. Though the water in the bay is pretty warm, it's not good for them, alright? You got that? I need you to bring your chin out of the water if I'm going to hear you."

She wrinkled her nose in disgust and pushed herself up. "I heard you."

"Good. Then wait for Kazuya here to get changed."

But Naru had already stripped off his sweater and shirt. The other boys had stopped abruptly as, layer by layer, Naru stripped down to his boxers and grabbed a pair of goggles and snorkel from a tub next to them. Without a second glance to them, he curled his toes around the edge of the dock and did a perfect, Olympic style speed dive into the water. Mai only took a second to laugh at the shocked expressions on the others faces before ducking under herself to catch up to Naru, who had already darted out from the alcove of the dock ceiling and into the sunlit waters.

She was waiting for him when he came up for air.

"Whaddya know, Naru's got balls."

"Of course I have balls. I'm a man. And it's not like there's much difference between boxers and swim trunks anyways."

"If I said I could see the tip of your pecker, would you believe me."

He paused, then wrinkled his nose at her distastefully. "Please don't be crass. You are still a girl, I'd like to believe you have some propriety."

"Then what would you like me to call it?"

"Nothing, now will you get going? We got a lot of distance to cover."

Mai frowned. "Eh?"

Naru just gave her the look that told her he thought she was being especially idiotic. "The barrier? Or have you changed your mind about living here till they cry you dead in a few years?"

Heat rose to her cheeks and she dropped back down to the water in a puff of angry bubbles. Down below the other mermaids had scattered in different directions with their companions—or at least Amanda and Sonja had. Mandy lurked somewhere near the bottom as her ginger boy floundered above the surface, calling her name. She looked annoyed and sorry all at once.

It had been Mandy who had told her not to get close, right? But they at least had to make a show of it, right?

Just as she considered diving down and joining her, Naru's hand squeezed her shoulder. She turned around to find him looking at her, without the dorky goggles (which hung around his neck), and with his thick dark hair floating about his head like a crown. He jabbed a thumb over his shoulder, then grabbed her hand and pulled her back up to the surface.

"I wasn't done talking to you," he said. "We still have a system to help us communicate when I need to breathe."

"I've did just fine before without that, didn't I?"

"Not really."

"You look pretty alive to me."

He huffed. "Look, will you stop being an irritating and just work with me? Once you get me to the barrier you're free to frolic and play with all your other goldfish friends."

Pursing her lips (or pouting, but that held even less dignity), Mai agreed to surface whenever he squeezed her wrist with his free hand and set off with his right hand holding tightly to hers. She went at a steady enough pace, though she did play with the idea of going as fast as she had back in the ocean with him and seeing if his boxers shot off. Not that she cared to see his jewels, but the sight of his face actually being embarrassed would be great! Not that she could even imagine that. Naru arrogant didn't transition easily to Naru embarrassed. Another reason it would be a fun idea.

Maybe she'd consider it on the way back. Best not to push her luck when she still had two hours to waste with him.

The barrier came up a lot sooner than she remembered it being. With her eyes closed, the man made bay had seemed so vast. Was it really this small? It had only taken five minutes max.

Naru didn't look in the least bit surprised when he turned his eyes up to the cement and metal monstrosity that separated their little mermaid 'lagoon' and the rest of the ocean. She followed his eyes as they wound around to the walls that also separated the bay from the rest of the world. Only shallow white beaches remained of their connection to land. The grate was before them, green with barnacles, seaweed, and other oceanic life.

"You said there was an electric bar of sorts near the bottom of this grate to prevent digging, right?"

Mai somehow found herself more preoccupied by the fact he had yet to let go of her hand even though they had reached their destination. "Uh, actually Jamie did. Or, rather, one of the others did, because Jamie told them."

"Which mermaid is that?"

"You haven't met her yet. And I'm starting to think she doesn't have a companion."

He raised his eyebrows in comprehension, but only said, "Is she in the aquarium? Can you find her for me?"

"I guess. But what are you going to so?"

"What do you think?" He pulled up his goggles and tipped the water out of them. His ability to tread water so easily impressed her. "Now go be helpful and find her."

Mai rolled her eyes at being bossed around like an employee, but dove under to set out at her task. She had to admit, she was a bit excited to return to the waters with her newly healed eyes to see everything for herself, so she didn't mind too much that Naru left the boring exam work to him.

As she slipped through the modern sculptures of coral pink, yellow, and various shades of brown to grey, she held her hands tight to her chest in wonder. It was just like the shows, except so not like them, with tiny schools of tropical fish that fluttered about her like birds. She could have been in a heavenly world in the sky, where her tail was enough to give her flight.

She had almost forgotten what she had been sent to look for when she heard it. The beautiful, mournful voice that almost became a sheer sound. Her heart seized at the sorrow in it, and she instinctively put her hands to her face, as though witnessing something terribly private.

At the same time, she was drawn to it, like Naru to her own song. And when the song came to an abrupt halt, she found herself floating behind a very skinny, mousy haired mermaid. She could see too many of her ribs.

Jamie turned a hollow face to her with bright, intelligent eyes.

"Hello, Mai. Did you want to sing with me?"

Mai shook her head stupidly. "The guys are in the water. We're not suppose to sing while they're here."

She shrugged. "If I see one of them trying to swim at me, I'll stop." And with that she turned back around to the grate, comfortably settled on her stone seat. Her murky green fins floated in the currents of the water. Mai looked out through the squares of seaweed and felt her heart give a little jump at the ocean beyond.

Blue. Open. So very, very open and big. It scared her like the end of the land shelf—the deep end of the world.

As Jamie started up her song again, Mai forgot about the ribs poking out at her sides or the thin face that had spoken and settled herself down besides her. Her own copper scales gleamed so happily they put her muggy, sad green ones to shame.

And yet she never felt so like another.

Because Jamie's wordless song touched her because it was the song that had somehow been rankling along in Mai's heart since her mother had died, and which Mai had taken special care to ignore. Because there was nothing Mai could do. Mom wasn't gone forever. Mom hadn't meant to leave. And Mai was all grown up now, she would just have to handle it.

And yet…

Mai opened up her mouth. She didn't know the notes. She didn't even know if her old, out of tune bagpipe moan would come out instead of music. But she started to sing.

It was like listening to someone—no, something, else. And Mai found as she let the waves brush past her that it didn't matter if she sang on the same note as Jamie, because the song was the same. Their loss was the same. And both of them still ached so badly without the power to do anything about it.

Mai feared that she would cry, but she didn't. Her eyes didn't burn, and the ocean water soothed her throat so it never tightened or constricted her voice. No human could see with so much of their soul without choking up.

She didn't notice when Jamie took her hand. But when the memory of Naru floated back to her, Mai closed her mouth long enough to notice that her grip felt frail, and her fingers were thin.

Jamie stopped with her and smiled. Mai smiled to.

"It's going to be okay," she said, giving her hand a squeeze.

"Why are you comforting me?" Mai almost said 'you're the one with the stolen lover and baby,' but she caught herself just in time.

"Because it's the same thing you meant to say to me." Jamie brushed her shoulder length mousy hair behind her. "So? You were looking for me?"

Mai straightened. "Oh yeah! Naru—I mean, my companion is trying to break us out and he wanted to know what you knew about the electrical thing that stops us from digging under the grating."

Jamie's smile slipped away and she looked sad. "Oh…"

"He's a real asshole, so try not to pay too much attention to what he says." Mai pulled her fin behind her, still holding tight to Jamie's hand. She moved to kick up, but Jamie pulled back. Mai gave her a questioning look.

"There's no use," she said with a shake of her head. "Rain already tried. He gave his life to it."

Mai had to grimace at this. "Nah, I don't think this is the same. Naru's sort of a genius. Like the Einstein kind."

But Jamie just slipped her hand out and wagged her head down in despair. "Rain was smart too, and he had a baby to save too. A brain is one thing, but motivation is greater. What does your Naru have to save? A pretty girl?"

Not even that much, she thought, but she couldn't tell her that. "Jamie, you can't give up now. Do you want to die here?"

A flash of fire returned to her eye, and for a moment Mai thought the frail mermaid was about to shout at her. But instead she sighed and pushed out from her rock.

"This isn't about giving up, Mai." She turned her face away. "I'm sorry."

And with a speed Mai didn't know someone so sickly was capable of, Jamie flipped over and sped off into the murky depths of the bay.

She didn't have much time to think on it before another mermaid with a tail that blended into the ocean far too well popped up behind her with a pitying, bright eyed look. She looked like she was about to cry, though, like Mai, she somehow couldn't. She didn't say anything as she watched the last of Jamie disappear into the depths.

Mai didn't know whether to be furious or sympathetic. She dropped somewhere inbetween with a grit of teeth.

"Selfish! Of course she's given up! And even if she has, the least she can do is tell us what she knows! I mean, if her companion tried to escape already, he may have failed, but he should know loads!"

Mandy was uncharacteristically patient as she let Mai rant. But the moment Mai lost her words, she put a cool hand on her shoulder.

"It isn't giving up, Mai. She's tried harder than any of us. She's a mother. Any mom would die before giving up on their baby."

A shiver crawled up her spine. "I don't get it."

"She's dying."

A loud quiet fell in between them. The image of the Jamie's sharp ribs and dull scales flipped behind her eyes.

Mai jerked away from Mandy's touch.

"Oh, come on. She just swam away like a guppie!"

"She isn't human. Sonja and her have seen it before. She's…look, everyone has a limit. Everyone can only handle so much. She's reached her limit. She's busted. You know she hasn't left the aquarium, not even once, for the past three days? Not for food not for nothing. All she can do is sing. In fact, the most she's even talk was to you just now. She's already done all she can for you."

But it couldn't compute—wouldn't compute. What Mandy was saying just didn't make sense to Mai.

With that sad, lost song ringing in her ears, Mai backed off a bit from the dirty blond mermaid's concern.

"I need to get back to Naru. He's going to have an earful for me."

"Nah, it's okay. Sonja's already helped him. He sent me down here to help you." She scowled. "He's a real arrogant piehole, you know that?"

Mai chuckled weakly. "I know, right?"

"Well, makes things easy for you."

An awkward silence fell inbetween them. As though thinking along the same wavelength, they both looked out at the same spot of water where Jamie had just disappeared.

A familiar crackle came from above them, followed by Dr. Tim's voice.

"Girls, time to head back."

Mai groaned. "God, just how many speakers does that guy have?"

"He's a creep! Can you believe Amanda thinks he might be alright?"

But, reluctantly, they headed back up to the surface, copper and sapphire scales throwing splashes of sunlight as they went. Right before they broke the glassy surface, so like a magical portal that would lead them back to the cruel, cold world, both of them hesitated. Creepy Tim speakers or not, the ocean could still reach them here; still hide them for what waited inside.

"Mandy…doesn't he care about what's happening to Jamie?"

Mandy gave Mai such a solemn, open look, it frightened her. In it she could see everything that she had almost let warm food and a good night's sleep cover up. It was what Naru never forgot, and why he spent all his time trying to get her out.

"What's she got left to give him?"

And with that, they broke through to the dry air and made their way to where two mermaids talked to a dark haired genius, their companions left to sunbathe on one of the distant beaches of the bay.


	22. Oh Mama

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Chapter 21

 _"_ _On this day in 1493, Italian explorer Christopher Columbus, sailing near the Dominican Republic, sees three "mermaids"–in reality manatees–and describes them as 'not half as beautiful as they are painted.'"_ This Day in History _, from .com_

He accepted the towel the frilly assistant to the doctor gave him, but didn't miss the smile nor the way her eyes did a once over on him. He started to wonder if he should have gone with the swim trunks, but she was easy enough to ignore. As he dried his hair, he waited on the edge of the dock for Mai to surface so he could help her out, and also, though he wouldn't admit it, so he could get one last look at her skirt like tail and copper scales and the way they brought out the chocolate warmth of her eyes.

But she didn't surface. In fact, none of them did.

Kazuya frowned as he glanced over at the cellophane doctor, who stood a bit a ways looking down into the water. He smiled in what could have been satisfaction until he frowned a bit and brought up the walkie-talkie he had been using to speak through the underwater speakers.

"Mandy, I don't have the patience to deal with you this time. If you don't go to your chute on the count of three, I'll give you a level three."

Level three? Chute?

At that the other three boys, as one, exchanged glances and quickly made their way off the dock. The cologne commercial brunette lightly slapped Kazuya on the back of his head.

"Hey!"

He gave Kazuya a flat stare. "That's our queue. We need to leave."

Kazuya was never one for being told what to do. But he also wasn't stupid and overemotional like Mai, so he just got up, took his clothes from the ogling assistant, and followed after the other boys without question. Even as they nodded their heads to security as though nothing out of the ordinary was happening, Kazuya couldn't smother the uncomfortable twist beneath his ribs.

He was just about to keep following with the others to the hall where their mermaids and their 'apartments' were when the annoying perverted ginger guy who didn't deserve to have his name remembered dared to grab on to his shoulder.

He scowled when Kazuya met his eye. "Don't give me the death glare. You're worried too, right?"

Kazuya's brain fell blank. The ginger took that as a yes and nodded over his shoulder before casually strolling back where they came. The security guards eyed him, but he didn't go back to the aquarium, but down the stairs to the observatory. Their shoulders visibly relaxed.

Kazuya followed.

Two seconds later, he was before the glass, looking at the blue and copper mermaids before two small, underground gates that had lifted from the ground of the aquarium. They didn't notice the two boys that took up the back of the observatory.

The blue mermaid, who had the look of a tom boy and thick, straight blond hair the color of dark wheat, seemed to be the focus, as she had curled up near the bottom with her hands clenched to her arms and a look of utter rebellious indignation on her features. Mai fluttered about her in waves of her gleaming fins and scales, her jaw set and her eyes sharp, but unable to hold still. She seemed to be conflicted on whether or not to vanish where the other mermaids had gone or stay with Mandy.

The dark open gates into the sands must be the chutes.

Kazuya clenched his fists into his pockets. So, it was harvesting day. And since Mai's eyes had healed, she would be joining the rest of the girls in the usual schedule.

Dr. Tim's voice came muffled from the other side of the glass.

"Do we have to go to level four? And Mai, don't think you're exempt just because you are new. You will both be punished if you don't go to your chutes this second. You're being ridiculous."

The ginger surprised him by growling. A full on, chest rumbling growl. For the first time Kazuya took a closer look at how the other boy was taking all this, and found that, rather than the perverted immaturity he had expected, his eyes had narrowed in dislike and his teeth were bared. He had his arms folded across his chest, but his hands clenched his arms much as the blue mermaid did, and his knuckles shown out white.

"Bastard," he muttered between his teeth.

Kazuya didn't respond, but turned his eyes back to the glass—

Just in time to watch as both mermaids squawked and twisted in on themselves, fingers to their necks.

His eyes widened. Of course. The collars.

Like a dog with its tail between its legs, Mai slipped into one of the holes, face buried in her hands, but the blue mermaid—Mandy?—remained. Though her arms shook uncontrollably as she unwound herself and a trickle of blood came from her bottom lip, her eyes blazed with a fury he had only seen on TV, or in images of war prisoners who hadn't lost their fight.

But while Kazuya watched on, stunned with horror, as she once more writhed and curled in on herself, the ginger leaped across the room and hammered his fists against the glass.

"Damn it, you idiot, just do as he says!"

Did…did this moron he had signed off the moment he'd gawked at Mai as a sexual object actually care about the mermaid he was assigned to? The same mermaid who had spent the entire two hours, not with him, but with Kazuya helping him investigate the grate?

Then again, if he hadn't been so proud, Kazuya would have been over there himself screaming at the girl. No one could watch this without reacting in some way or another.

And yet the look on the other boy's crumpled, freckle mashed face didn't tell the story of an outsider. There was intimacy there. Even an unempathetic robot like Kazuya could see that.

The speaker buzzed on, gargled with water and glass.

"Mandy, it doesn't have to be this hard. Why are you acting this way? Come now, into the chute and it will all be over."

The poor girl, after her second shock, couldn't stop shaking now. And as Naru watched, shining, raindrop like pearls fell from her clenched eyes and trickled to the bottom of the tank. Someone would have to get those later.

Mermaids did not cry easily, as their tears served no purpose in the salty ocean water. But the substance used to create the opals and pearls that leaked out on occasion served the same purpose as tears, but of similar substance to what oysters used to cover irritations. This protective, Mother of Pearl metallic substance covered irritants and washed what the ocean water couldn't get out of a mermaid's eyes in small, filmy flakes.

And yet, the properties were affected differently depending on the chemistry of their body, especially during that of pregnancy, where all sorts of hormones unsettled the balance. While human women experienced skin changes, acne, morning sickness, and mood swings, mermaids produced too much of their oyster-like anti-irritant, and instead of the scales of pearl which could be rubbed out of their eyes, the tears congealed and pushed out as gems.

The jewels were still dropping from Mandy's eyes.

The ginger had frozen. His breath audibly caught, and Kazuya suddenly feared the man would faint. But even his heart had started to pound a cramped, but painful rhythm.

Mandy hadn't been injected with the hormones yet.

But Dr. Tim wouldn't be able to see the small opals from above the surface.

As the speakers threatened Mandy one more time, Kazuya yanked the stupid red head away from the glass.

"Stop him!"

When the boy just stared at him blankly, Kazuya shook him hard.

"He'll kill the baby!"

That woke him up. So pale he was nearly gray behind his freckles, the guy booked it out of the aquarium, leaving Kazuya alone to watch the opals trickle off and die from beneath Mandy's bowed head.

And as she still refused to move down to her chute, he couldn't help but wonder why. She knew she would be shocked and pushed into the chute, so why did she fight it? Did she already know and didn't want them to find out? But they would the moment they took her blood. So did that mean she wanted to be shocked? Didn't she know what that could do to her unborn child?

At the same time, if she didn't know, was she simply rebelling? And the look on the ginger's face…

He wanted to break things again. He very nearly yanked up that stupid, spindly porch table where they so often pushed him in with the other boys and thrown it at the glass. But it would accomplish nothing, and he had already lost too much control.

Turning sharply away, Kazuya ran a hand through his hair, and left without another glance back.

His brain, however, raced.

At the top he was met with a frazzled Dr. Tim, or rather, as frazzled as a plastic human being could get.

"Ah, Mr. Shibuya, I was just coming to find you. I need a report on how your research is coming so far, and I have a few details to work out with you on what we will be expecting from now on. Companion work is only part of your job, I hope you recall."

Kazuya gave him a stiff smile. "I recall."

"Good. Well, if you'll just come with me to my office. Shirley? Could you get us some tea? Some of that ginger green, if you would. And I need the Atlantis folder."

Kazuya inwardly cringed. He hated green tea. Yoga tea, his father called it.

And all the while he knew somewhere behind him in this hellhole, Mai was being injected and tortured for opals.

It was going to be a long, long day.


	23. When in Doubt, Make a Baby Pouch

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Chapter 22

 _"Darwin may have been quite correct in his theory that man descended from the apes of the forest, but surely woman rose from the frothy sea, as resplendent as Aphrodite on her scalloped chariot."  
— Margot Datz (A Survival Guide for Landlocked Mermaids) _

The chute was dark and claustrophobic. Then it slipped her out into the huge, cylinder tank, where she was once more asked to stick her arm into the metal loop that popped out of the floor along with the syringe.

There was no lying this time. Nor was there any explanation. They the syringe injected fluid into her, turning her chest heavy and making the world spin. Unlike with the black opals, they shocked her multiple times, but at lower intensities, and the white drops that trickled from her eyes didn't hurt as much. They fell like milk down her crouched tail and solidified when they hit the floor.

She dug for a place in her mind outside of the tank as she choked and jerked. Somewhere by the warm riverbed, putting pebbles in her belly button and singing old nineties rock songs with her mother. When the taste of bile rose to her throat, she tried to instead remember the buckets of Redvines licorice her mother always kept stocked on top of the fridge. Long after her skin buzzed numb from the forceful hands of electric torture, ramming her muscles long with fire, she remembered her mother's favorite old quilt, which had old ties of yard holding it together.

But by the time she was finally lifted out of the tank, every ounce of her emotional and mental strength had been drained, leaving her empty and raw like a too-dry nose. The hands plopped her on an examine table and she didn't care when they stripped her floppy form. She didn't care when they dressed her like a sleepy toddler, nor did she react when they once more took her vitals, checked her once more tender eyes (though not nearly as bad as before), and set a heating lamp over her. When her tail fell apart, she once more fainted, just to wake up with someone tipping her into bed.

When she turned her head over, they had left, and Naru had just stepped out of the bathroom. For a moment, he took her in from the doorway, then quietly walked to the bed and sat down at her side. He had a strange look on his face she couldn't decipher and she had no strength to wonder or care. She couldn't even manage to be embarrassed when their eyes met and stuck for far too long.

And then his cheek twitched and his face crumpled. He turned his head away.

"How are you feeling?"

She grunted. A noncommittal sort of noise. She was tired, but not in a way for sleep. Only enough to want to lie on top of her covers like this until she simply melted away.

The view on the screens today was brighter. Instead of the dim, underwater surroundings, they showed a beach filled with soft, sunset shades. She watched some virtual fronds of a palm tree sway in an unfelt breeze. The waves lapped at the sand, and she turned to her side with the thought of sticking her hand in the warm water. But, of course, she wasn't stupid, and her hand flopped uselessly down the other side of the bed.

A space of quiet ran between them. Mai didn't talk, and Naru didn't move from his spot on her bed. He wore the blue scrubs again, and she the ugly, cotton dress.

 _'_ _I can't go!'_

Mai physically cringed. Oh, Mandy…

She took a shaky breath. She didn't want to cry. She was too tired. But poor Mandy…why hadn't she said anything? She could have stayed with Jamie, or something—they could have figured out something.

But even as she thought that, Mai knew they couldn't. They were just a bunch of ordinary girls, and it wasn't certain if Naru could have come up with anything.

"Tell me what to do."

Naru's rough voice brought her from her thoughts.

"For what?" At least all the screaming hadn't broken her vocal cords.

"To comfort you, or whatever it is. You know I'm a complete moron, so please, just tell me what I need to do."

This was new. She had never heard her arrogant asshole sound so plaintive before.

Frowning, she sat up. "Are you okay?"

"Don't ask me that, this has nothing to do with me."

But she scooted to his side and peered around to see his face. What little he allowed her to see was tensed, and his lips were pressed so hard together they had nearly vanished. He also looked pale—too pale, even after so long in the sun.

With a deep exhale, she pulled in her legs. Of course. This wasn't just hard on her. She wasn't an idiot, she had woken up early enough to know he hadn't slept a wink last night. And even when they had gone to the aquarium for a break, he hadn't explored or played. Just went straight to the grate for research.

And then to be stuck in a room with her, el la tortured maiden, which was totally out of his field of know-how. Because it wasn't as though he wanted to be an unempathetic asshole. No. If he had wanted to, he wouldn't be fighting so hard for her. He wouldn't be throwing his pride against the wall and ask her for help.

Heart heavy, she reached over and embraced him, arms pinned to his side and all.

"You don't need to try so hard, you know."

Naru had stiffened at her touch. When he continued to remain frozen, as though stunned by the skin contact, she just smiled to herself and gave him a squeeze before pulling away.

"Sorry I wasn't there to help you inspect the grate. I went to get Jamie and when I found her…" she somehow couldn't really explain about the moment she had shared with the dying mermaid.

Naru shrugged. "I got what I needed."

"And I'm sorry I haven't been any help either. Is there anything I can do?"

"You're the one who just—Mai, stop, you're the one who needs help, not me. I know what they did to you, and it's—" His sentence choked off and he dug his fingers into his hair with a quiet curse. "That blue mermaid…she's pregnant, isn't she?"

"I think so. It was just a maybe when she told me by the chutes." She bit her lip before blurting out, "oh, Naru, she was so scared! She's going to end up like Jamie, she just knows it!"

"Like Jamie?"

"With her companion and baby taken away and her being left to die. That's where she is now, down by the grate, singing as she waits until…until…" and with a harsh suck of air, Mai dug the palms of her hands into her eyes and let out a sob. "And she told me to stay away—to keep my distance from you—and she was acting so cold towards him just because she was scared and now he's probably getting kicked out as we speak—"

"Mai, calm down."

"Okay, I'm sorry, I'm probably making you uncomfortable. I don't mean to."

But then his arms wrapped about her. Unlike when she had hugged him, he was large enough to make it less awkward and even managed to gingerly pull her over to his side, where the warmth of his body seeped in through the cotton between them. Hiccupping from too much crying, both forced and unforced, she twisted her hands into his shirt and dug herself into his warmth, suddenly too hungry for comfort to care how uncomfortable it made him.

Like before, his touch was gentle and cautious. Even his fingers touched her nape so lightly they could have just been in passing. His sweet uncertainty made her smile through her tears. So use to being a jerk, he didn't know how to not be, even when he wanted to be kind.

But this would do. He probably only did it because she had done it to him in attempts to comfort him; teaching by example. Perhaps she would try that out from now on.

Now, if only the bastard would actually show when he needed to be hugged or whatever.

She pulled away just enough to sniff and wipe tears off her raw cheeks. He quickly let her go and backed off, as though caught red handed in doing something naughty.

"So, what's the plan?" she asked.

"I'd rather not say here. Suffice it to say that, if I need you to do anything, I'll let you know what it is."

And although that answer didn't satisfy her in the least, she let it slide. She wasn't in the right mood to argue.

Once more, she wiped gingerly at her eyes. "So, any idea of what there's to do around here besides staring at a wall or sleeping?"

"I have books to read," he said simply. "And I don't know if they told you yet, but you are actually free to roam between here and the aquarium. The collar around your neck is to keep you from going anywhere you shouldn't, along with other things. And as long as I know where you are—"

"Why don't you come with me?"

He jerked a bit with a frown. "And go swimming? I have work to do."

"Oh, come on, you look dead on your feet." No need to mention that she knew he hadn't slept the night before. "At least bring your books and stuff with you. It should be low tide now, you can probably walk from the dock to a beach."

Though he hesitated and wrinkled his nose several times, he eventually gave in. It wasn't like it was enjoyable staying in this 'cell' of theirs, especially with the falsely cheery sunset scene that had been chosen for them.

Before they left he asked whether she had eaten or not, and when she said she hadn't, he ended up pulling up a box of bagels, cream cheese, and crab cakes that had been dropped off earlier. The two of them munched on them on the way to the aquarium, and Mai made a valiant effort to forget everything that had just happened that morning, including the stinging of her eyes and how she felt more like a walking, hollow, plastic doll than a creature of flesh and bone.

Once they opened the glass door to the aquarium outside (eyeballed suspiciously by half a dozen security guards, one of which tugged a bit on her collar before letting her pass), rather than jumping into the water, she followed Naru to the steps that led out of the sheltered dock and declined to a tiny little beach that only existed at low tide. If it weren't for the thirty foot cement wall framing it and the rest of the bay in, it would have looked picturesque. The instant he was seated and his shoes were off, Naru pulled out a boring looking book with the picture of a pacific island and a satellite and dug his nose into it.

She sighed. So much for company.

She munched until she was full, and still reluctant to feel fins, she lay back in the warm sand, loving the way it almost burned on the back of her legs and arms. The sun blazed a deep gold red on the other side of her closed eyelids.

The hush of the waves engulfed her more fully than any recording could in the cell. And the sun felt so good on her skin. So warm and dry, and so unlike she'd ever felt as a mermaid.

No. She felt human.

She didn't know when she started to doze off. But when a lap of cold water touched the bottom of her heel, uncomfortable tingles ran up her leg and she woke up with a start. The sun had only just started to get close to the horizon, so she couldn't have been asleep too long. Quickly, she scuttled out of the way of the water, just to be distracted by something else.

Naru lay on the sand just a few inches above where she had, keeping him from reach of the water. The pacific island book splayed to one side of his chest, where it threatened to slip off completely, and he, by all accounts, looked and sounded dead asleep. As she padded a bit closer, she couldn't help but realize how young he looked. She had never noticed how many lines his hard, arrogant expression tended to give him. And had his lashes ever been that thick and long? Any girl would be envious of those.

A bit warm in the face, she reached out a hand and gently pulled a strand of hair that had been twirling in the wind away from danger of tickling his brow. Best she let him sleep as long as possible. Heaven knew the idiot needed it. Even with his eyes closed she could make out the deep shadows beneath them.

She had just settled back into the sand with a little smile when something off the water caught her attention. It was a wet, dark hair atop equally dark skin. The girl in the water waved her arm, and Mai responded with waving back and then putting a finger to her lips. The other girl nodded, then slowly and carefully paddled up the shore in a gleam of ruby scales.

"Hey, Sonja," Mai whispered.

"Why don't you get in the water?" she asked. "I do love watching your fins. So pretty."

"Thanks, but I felt like sunbathing. It's nice not having to switch back and forth all the time, you know? Does it ever stop hurting?"

"Not really." Sonja pushed herself out with a coming wave and pulled herself closer to Mai's level. When she seemed satisfied enough, she flipped over into a sitting position and stuck the end of her fins in the water.

For a long few minutes, they didn't say anything. From the stern downturn of Sonja's mouth, Mai supposed she already knew about Mandy.

And it was her that eventually broke the silence.

"Jamie's missing."

Mai didn't react, though her chest thumped a little heavier than before.

"How's Mandy?" Mai asked.

"I don't know. She's still in for testing."

"We can visit each other's rooms, right?"

"If our companions escort us, yes."

Mai snorted. "Perish the thought if we should start a 'no boys allowed' club."

"It would cause unnecessary stress, I guess, and with the hormone treatments we're under enough stress as it is."

Both of them gave little shudders, then exchanged wry, humorless smiles.

Somewhere above them, some seagulls belted to one another. One swooped down and perched itself on the water a ways out, where it proceeded to preen its feathers.

"I'm going to make her a baby pouch. You know, something you can just stick the baby in and he's already bundled up."

Mai gave her a raised eyebrow. "Forget whether or not that might just make it worse, how are you going to get the materials for it?"

"Oh, you ask Dr. Tim. It takes a while, but if you're willing to make it with some bodyguards, they let you. It has something to do with art improving mental health and all the crap." She grimaced. "And…yeah, that probably would be a bad idea. She might not even be able to use it…"

"When's what'shisface getting kicked out?"

"Not until the second trimester. That is, if he isn't willing to, uh…"

Mai cringed, already knowing what she was about to say. "Maybe we should think of something else to talk about."

Sonja readily agreed. "You know, your companion isn't so bad. I got to spend some time with him today, and I'm really impressed with how determined he is to get us out, though I think he's just thinking of you. It's sweet."

In an attempt to fight back her blush, Mai scowled. "I guess, though he was the one who caught me in the first place. Freaking jerk stuck me in a tank after that and had all these plans to run tests on me and use me to find Atlantis or whatever that place is called."

Sonja shrugged. "Will kept trying to hit on me by calling me his Pocahontas fish."

"What?"

"Oh, he stopped calling me that after I broke his nose." She gave Mai a broad smile that made her dark, almond eyes gleam like obsidian. "Now he's quite boring. I almost regret it."

"You two have never…you know…done anything, right?"

She dipped her chin down sheepishly. "Oh no, never anything like that. I'm sure he thinks I'm pretty, but all the Indian comments sort of signed him off permanently. Not to mention I don't think he knows how to talk other than flirting." She pursed her lips and put a finger to her chin. "He has a rather nice face, I suppose. A little too nice. Not my type at all." She shrugged. "Either way, I'm not too worried."

"Why not? Mandy sure was. She was the one who was all 'stay away! Stay away!'"

"And that's her problem there. The forbidden fruit is always more attractive. And, well," Sonja glanced to the side, picking up her fins from the waves. "She's always been the, how do you say it…passionate type. I think the passionate ones are in more danger than the rest. More feeling. And while Amanda is very friendly and open, I've always got the impression she never shows how she really feels and thinks to anyone at all, so that should protect her for a while."

Ignoring the nervous wonder of whether Mai could consider herself 'the passionate type,' she asked, "What about you?"

Again, Sonja shrugged. "Whatever happens, I'll just have to deal with it, won't I? It won't help to worry about it now."

It sounded both heartless and completely sensible.

Mai, however, couldn't swallow it. The whole topic was making her ill to her stomach. Taking a deep breath, she pulled up her knees and ran the back of her forearms along the scales on her shins.

"There's got to be something we can do," Mai said.

"About Mandy?"

"About anything." She lowered her voice even further. "Naru stayed up all night just to study, it's all he's thinking about. I can't just leave this all up to him, though. He can't do it by himself. If only I could have asked Jamie for what she knew."

Sonja gave her a curious look. "She's told me plenty. I already told him." Then she frowned. "Isn't his name Kazuya?"

"Naru is what I call him because he's a narcissist, but that's beside the point. Isn't there anything we can do? Anything at all?"

Sonja shook her head. "Mai, if any of us knew, we would have suggested it by now. Don't you think all of us stay up late at night scraping our brains for ideas? No. The best we can do is be grateful that we have good food, a safe place to sleep, and all this open water to keep us connected to our ocean. And being a mermaid isn't so bad—"

"Stop." She couldn't take any more of that optimistic, airy tone of hers. And she had always thought of Sonja as so sensible. She, after all, had been here the longest besides Jamie, and she had always been the one to eventually bring peace between the Amandas.

Sonja looked apologetic. "Sorry. But, you know, Dr. Tim does have a point. It's not like we could have survived long outside anyways. We aren't human, and we don't know how to live as mermaids. Maybe we are better off in here. It sucks, but at least we're still living."

But too much was flooding Mai's mind to just ignore it and listen to her. There was Jamie's dying song of loss, the frantic flailing of Mandy as she fought to keep her secret just for a little longer, and then the empty hole Mai's own insides had become from the injections and torture she had been forced to endure.

And behind her was an eighteen year-old boy passed out on the sand who tried so earnestly to figure out how to comfort her.

Even if Sonja had a point, Mai didn't know if she could like the girl as much as she had hoped, though she did her best to squash down the little sprout of dislike. Sonja was just like her: just doing her best to survive. Mai couldn't hold that against her.

"I guess I'll head back in and look for Jamie. It will be easier to get the stuff I need for the baby pouch if I do something before he asks."

Before Mai could mention just how heartless that sounded, Sonja had slipped back into the surf.


	24. Give Up, Man You Like Her A Lot

***stretch* Heya. Love that it's finally getting cold outside. I hope you all are doing well, wherever you are around the globe. If you get a mo, please drop a review for this week's chapter, maybe a PM. I'd love to hear from you.**

 **Hope you enjoy! Here's your weekly update.**

Chapter 23

 _"_ _But are mermaids real? No evidence of aquatic humanoids has ever been found. Why, then, do they occupy the collective unconscious of nearly all seafaring peoples? That's a question best left to historians, philosophers, and anthropologists."_ _–_ _National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration of the_ United States Department of Commerce

Days slipped by, and something of a routine begun for Kazuya and Mai. They'd wake up in the mornings to breakfast, Mai would get a quick look over for any signs of physical disease, and then she would head for the aquarium and he would head for the observation deck, arms full of books. Two days after he received his books, he got a laptop, which quickened both his work related research and his secret research. He had to turn it in each night for his time card, however, which told him more than enough of how careful he had to be with what he did with the internet. Email of any kind was blocked off, though a part of him remembered the email he had sent right before they had been taken and wondered what good would ever come out of it.

Every now and then, Mai would float over the glass to wave at him, and he would lamely raise his hand in return. The flash of sunlight on scales and her dark hair framing those chocolate eyes always succeeded in making his stomach clench, no matter how prepared he was for it.

At noon they would meet on the dock and have lunch handed to them by the security guards with the other mermaids, who he never paid much attention to. His time with the Indian had been enough to see she was of an airy mind and overly solemn air, with nothing interesting to say outside of the next five minutes. The little blond talked too much, and her chipperness gave him a headache (even worse than Mai's whining), and all the pregnant blue one did most of the time was mope and glare at him. He didn't hold that against her, however. If there was anything he learned from his mother, it was that pregnant women had all the right in the world to be as grumpy as they damn well please. He actually found Mandy to be the least annoying out of the lot and their companions, which resulted in him, Mai, and her taking up a corner of the dock by themselves on most days.

The ginger boy, on the other hand, had taken to boasting about her pregnancy as though it were some sort of accomplishment. That is, he did until one day his so called woman tried drowning him. None of them saw Mandy for a few days after that. It did shut him up, however. And to think Kazuya had almost considered feeling sorry for the bloody twit.

Since the overly handsome darker companion was with the Indian (Will or something or other), he avoided him on principle of keeping away from her, as well as the last quiet little brunette guy who hid in the corner and only came out when 'his mermaid,' the tiny jabbering blond, called him out. It amused Kazuya, however, as he was a monster of a boy. The irony that the smallest mermaid would get the giant. The one time he did make a sound, though, it was to laugh at one of the ginger assholes sexual comments on knocking up a mermaid, so Kazuya didn't nurture any doubt on the foulness of his character, shy or otherwise.

Mai's opinion of the others, he soon found, was far better than his own. But then, earning his good opinion was done rarely and not before a great deal of trouble.

However, despite his original distaste of Mai, he found her growing on him, and not just because of her fortunate attractiveness. She still gave him headaches, on occasion, and they had at least one stupid fight every day, but then she would duck down to meet his eye in that sweet way that told him she was checking on how he was doing, or she'd pick up on his thoughts without him speaking a word. She would speak words of comfort before he even realized he needed them, and late at night, as he studiously trudge through book after book, her fingers would somehow find their way back into his hair.

A week passed by like this. Then another hormone treatment that left her more pale and wan than before. Then another week.

The wiring diagrams in his head were starting to jumble together. He had to make a move before he confused himself. He would need something thin, probably a shell that Mai could fetch for him, to pry open one of the little flaps that the service arms came through.

Dr. Tim listened to his thrown together reports on ocean rifts and shallow pacific lagoons every few days. But if that was where the merfolk had been hiding all these centuries, they would have been found by now. But the ocean was still vast. It may just take a meticulous search to come up with anything.

Another night. More books. Mai's sleepy fingers against his scalp after another session of torture.

Two more swim days of pointless diving down to check the grate and the system used to hold the mammoth walls together. During these Mai searched for sharp shells, which were then thrown out by security guards the moment he got on shore. This meant, to some degree, they were being watched. He almost fell into despair until Mai leaned over him secretly one night and pulled a shell out of her bra.

Two long, fast weeks. The walls of their cell changed from underwater, to tropical shore, to open ocean, and then to a fresh lagoon fed by a waterfall and framed by trees.

And in quiet moments as he rested his eyes at night from reading, he found himself imaging himself in a comfortable living room by the fire, a book in his hand, and Mai wrapped about him like a mink on the armchair behind him, her hand in his hair just like it was now, and his grandmother's old solitaire diamond ring on her finger. The image made him ache far too much for comfort. This cold, soulless place was doing things to his mind, he knew it. What he wouldn't do to be back home…with her.

Then, on the Tuesday night of the third week, he decided he was ready. He couldn't take one more session of the hormone treatments on Mai. The shell would be enough. Unfortunately, he would only be able to take Mai. The other girls would have to wait until he could come back with reinforcements. But Mai wouldn't come willingly without Mandy, who she now considered a friend. Ugh. Well, two mermaids might be helpful, as long as the girl could keep up. And her mouth shut.

But how to communicate it? Surely they didn't have microphones in the aquarium as well. No camera could look over that wide space, perhaps they were in selected places?

Hell, he wished there was a way to know more of this. But, unfortunately, the information provided to him as coming from Jamie was second hand, and splotchy, at best. The only thing he didn't already know was that the bathrooms had no cameras, just microphones, and that Dr. Tim was an insomniac.

Not like that helped any.

He kept his eyes peeled when they were brought out for their 'companion swim,' as the plastic doctor liked to call it. Kazuya wore swim trunks this time, if anything but to avoid any comments from the stupid ginger. Mai asked him why he was so quiet, but at a hard look from him, she dropped it. So the girl could be taught. That will make this easier. It was best that he move as randomly and sporadically as possible. Too much planning and even the doctor might catch on.

Adrenalin always helped too.

"Alright, girls, remember the rules. Mandy, if you leave him or try to horseplay again, it will be a weeklong detention."

"It wasn't horseplay, doctor, it was murder."

"Either one will get you locked in your room."

Kazuya caught Mandy and Mai exchanging looks of dry humor as he readied himself for his dive into the water.

He heard a snicker behind him from the ginger. "What, you think you're on the swim team or something, Kazuya?"

Was that supposed to embarrass him? Like he'd care what he looked like. There was something to be said when Kazuya could swim at a decent pace with Mai on his own while the rest of the companions had to be pulled around by their mermaids. Not to mention he could make the span of the bay to the grate and back. The thought made him smile. Brains and the body. He really did have everything.

'Narcissist,' hissed Mai's voice in his head.

…Maybe she had a point.

"I'll leave you three to it, then. Remember to go to your chutes when you come back, not your rooms, all right?"

The mermaids groaned. Mai ducked down into the water while the other two took their companions' hands. Mandy glared as the ginger cannonballed and splashed water into her face.

"Guess you two are on your own today," she said before he could come up. "I don't want to burden you with daddy here."

As though to back up her point, he rose to the surface with his eyes open and his freckled face split into a toothy smile.

Kazuya hesitated. He wouldn't be able to get his message to her today, not without acting suspicious, and there was no way he was trusting the ginger. He'd have to think of another way.

Mai's hand tugged on his ankle and he bent over into his dive. He performed it perfectly, flat lining like a bullet just below the water's surface with Mai following at a relaxed pace beneath him. Every now and then the edges of her fins would flick high enough to brush against his legs like silk. That uncomfortable stomach squeeze right below his rib cage would happen each time.

They paddled out to the middle of the bay, far from the sight of the observatory window. They didn't have a destination this time, so Mai just followed him in lazy, ribbon-like circles. When he came to a stop somewhere above a clearing in the coral, where fish dipped in and out, he watched her rippling figure far beneath the surface before tipping onto his back. The blue sky above hurt his eyes more than the sun, so he closed them and focused on breathing. He had to be cool as the water. The plan would work, and yet there were still too many variables he couldn't account for. For one, how would he be able to tell Mai what to do without them hearing in? If they had already heard about his observations of the grate and about the shells, they would already know about his attempts and, clearly, thought little of it. That both unnerved and encouraged him. It would mean his red herrings would work. Hopefully.

A cool hand tugged him upright. Her copper hair stuck to the sides of her smile.

"Come down here, I found something cool. And don't give me that blank 'what possibly could be entertaining to me' look, you don't have anything better to do."

With that, she ducked her chin down, almost as though she were aware of how cute she looked when she did that as she smiled, then ducked back down to the depths. Sighing, and more than a little unnerved, he emptied the goggles around his neck and slapped them on. He hated wearing these things, but they did clear up the view.

A deep breath, and he dove.

The colors beneath burst into instant clarity beneath the glass-like surface. The water's faceted breaking and bending of the light played on every surface and made the sheen of Mai's new-penny scales dance. She waited for him near the bottom of a space in the coral, where the white sand glittered with specks of quartz and silicon.

"Come on," she said, eyes bright.

His stomach did another squeeze under his ribs, and for a moment he feared she had sung the words, for the same irresistible urge to get as far from the surface and as close to her as possible came back to him. How hard could it be to breathe water instead of air?

When he drew close enough, she grabbed his wrist and pulled him to rest with his stomach against the sand. Her pale fingers pointed beneath a fan of coral. For a moment, he saw nothing but a couple of little yellow fish. Then he noticed their shape.

A perfect, impossible, cube.

"Aren't they funny? Didn't they design a car after those?"

He didn't know why she bothered to ask. It wasn't like he could talk underwater like her.

Lungs starting to burn for air, he slipped from her grasp and turned to resurface. Mai slipped before him on her side, eager to see if his expression showed any appreciation for the weird fish.

And completely paralyzed him.

It was the beach all over again, except this time, rather than painted with gold, she was backlighted with all the colors of the rainbow, with the sun setting her copper halo of hair aglow like a fire. The chocolate of her eyes had never looked so bright and expressive, and everywhere was the shimmer of scales, the framing of fins on her forearms, and the banner of her beautiful skirt-like tailfin-

Which wrapped about his shoulders and back as she moved past. He had always thought fish fins felt slimy, but then, he had never been so caressed by one underwater, for as her long layers of fins flowed past it was like a gossamer blanket of silk, warm with her touch.

His knees weakened. Had he been on land he would have collapsed, but here he simply started to float. His lungs were fit to bursting for air, and he could only stare.

Her pink mouth parted in a broad, happy grin. He was drunk on it, delirious. Why had he been so stressed again? Was there any really reason in the world for him to be unhappy? How could he be? It just wasn't possible with her like that.

Then his eyes fell on the black collar around her neck and it hit him like a train.

Of course…that's how they had heard…

He gasped so hard for air on reaching the surface he swore he could've scraped off a layer of epidermal from his windpipe.

"You get a leg cramp down there?" she asked, eyebrows lowered in concern.

"Something like that," he wheezed.

"Well, jee, I'm sorry I didn't grab you. If it helps any I was about to before you started paddling like you were on fire."

"Duly noted." He coughed, winced, then shook the last of the water from his ears and gestured to her. "Come here for a second, would you?"

He tried not to lock up again when her fins brushed his feet so he could finger the thick, tube of a collar on her neck. He pressed his fingertips hard on the rubber and could just feel the circuitry beneath. Of course there weren't microphones under the water. Why waste the time and resources needed to make microphones that could zone in on the voices of a few mermaids over a square mile of water when you could just put a microphone to the mermaids themselves? Of course they would have heard everything he had said. Who knew what else this collar did? It wasn't like Dr. Tim had bothered to tell him, and like Kazuya would even bother to ask. Best not to draw attention to what he was thinking.

He tugged a bit and was relieved to see enough space around the necklace for comfort. This would make it possible to cut off, if he could find the tools for it. He would have to take it off if they were to escape successfully. More than likely there was a tracking device somewhere in there. No sooner had he started to wonder how he could find such a tool when it occurred to him, and he smiled in satisfaction.

"Uh, what's the creepy smile for?" she asked.

"Nothing. I'm just brilliant."

She frowned. "Care to share your thoughts or am I too dumb to understand?"

"In due time. So, box fish. Didn't think they lived out here."

She gave him a curious look and didn't fall for the bait to change the subject.


	25. Squeeze-Your-Face Escape--or is it?

**Here's an extra update this week because Gryffindor Rat was so kind as to make me my first ever fanart! It's an awesome picture of Mai as a mermaid! She got her skirt-like tail fin and gills and the fins on her forearms and everything! ^.^ You guys should ask her to show it to you! I wish there was someone I could put it up here on fanfiction.**

 ***squeal* Please review! I've loved all your thoughts oh so much!**

 **Oh, and to Beth the guest reviewer, you made me blush. Thank you. For all your many 'wonderful's'. I hope you find this update.**

Chapter 24

 _"_ _A mermaid found a swimming lad,  
Picked him for her own,  
Pressed her body to his body,  
Laughed; and plunging down  
Forgot in cruel happiness  
That even lovers drown." - William Butler Yeats_

Naru was acting strange. If she had to put her finger on it, she'd say he might be happy, but as his relaxed expression said nothing and his normal state of being was grumpy, it was all guesswork.

Course, his curious attitude didn't distract her from the dread of returning to the chute. Sonja, Amanda, and her slipped into the dark, claustrophobic tubes as Mandy was lifted out for her weekly prenatal check up. When she was spat out into a familiar cylinder tank, she swallowed the bile rising to her throat and tried not to shiver. The blazing white line of light framing the bottom of the tank never failed to pop up in her nightmares of late.

The little metal arm holding the ring rose up and the rubber stranger appeared from the darkness on the other side of the glass.

"You've been such a good girl, Mai," they said. "If you're just as good today, we'll have another present waiting for you in your cell."

They had promised her a present last time and it had turned out to be a TV and a set of Disney and classic movies to entertain her while she was bored. Whatever could be next, though, she couldn't really care, but either way she was going to suffer, and she might as well get something out of it.

Still fighting not to throw up, she put her arm into that cold, metal ring. It tightened, holding her in place. Then the syringe popped out.

Mai closed her eyes.

Some time later, after the screaming had stopped and all the little, gleaming pebbles of rainbow were sucked up from the floor, Mai was lifted out of the tank and brushed clean of any vomit that had stuck to her hair. Like usual, she passed out at that point and woke up dressed, clean, and human back in her cell. Besides her bed against the wall was a new plastic tote of books.

Groaning, she sat up, emptier than ever before. The books stared back at her, their covers as illegible to her blank mind as if they were written in another language. Unconsciously, she hugged herself. She hated this feeling: as though all her organs had been sucked out with the opals.

A hand brushed against her face. With a shudder, she leaned against the warmth. That's right. She always got so cold after the hormone treatments. Without a word, Naru slipped an arm beneath her still pink legs and around her shoulders and lifted her from the bed. If she hadn't been so drained of feeling, she might have protested or even cared about what he was doing with her.

When the blinding light of the bathroom broke through the underwater gloom of the bedroom's screens, a part of her woke up. He set her on the sink, quietly closed the door, then soundlessly put a paper and pencil next to her. As he wrote, he spoke.

"How are you feeling? You have something on your face, let me get that."

Except he wasn't looking at her face. He switched on the facet full blast and let the white noise of rushing water fill the small bathroom, but kept his eyes to the paper, which he then pointed to for her to read.

 _I'm going to do something. Don't say anything about it._

No cameras in the bathroom. Only microphones. That's what Jamie's companion had found. But what if it wasn't true? What if things had changed? What if he was wrong?

"There, all clean," he said, having not touched her face at all, though his eyes had met hers. "What are the books for?"

"They said it was because I was good."

His hands came for her. She flinched when they reached for her shirt and down to her strap. Just as she felt his fingertips leaving burning trails along the top of her breasts, she realized what he was searching for and pointed to the right strap where she kept the sharpened seashell.

He pulled it out with a small smile. "Books? Doesn't seem like fit compensation, but I guess it could be."

"It's better than nothing."

Naru moved around her to the toilet, where he picked a bit at the wall just above it. Within seconds he had silently pulled out a flap, and the folded metal arm glinted in the depths of the square hole it had once covered.

"Think they would give you anything if you promised to behave? I'm sure we could use a few chosen tools for getting out of here." His fingers dove down past the metal arm. He frowned as he fingered about for a bit, the seashell left on the tank of the toilet.

"I doubt it. They probably would have thought of that." Naru pulled out a set of colored wires pinched between his fingers. "Why didn't you think of that? You're not as smart today, methinks."

"Geniuses have off days too." A jolt of either worry or excitement managed to make its way through her emotional emptiness when he frowned, and then picked out two of the wires, which were as thick as both his thumbs put together. He took up the seashell in his other hand.

Before she could think of what to say next, he had torn off the rubber lining, exposing the tight band of copper beneath, set both naked bands of copper next to each other and twisted them. He twisted and twisted, face red with the effort of staying quiet as the water kept going in the sink. She was dying to ask what he was hoping to accomplish when, all a sudden, there came a sharp snap and all the lights turned off.

It was pitch blackness. She wouldn't have been able to see her hand in front of her face, let alone anything else, for that matter.

Naru's hand fell over her mouth, cutting off the question at the end of her cry of surprise.

"What happened?" he said, as he tugged her off the counter. Only then did he take his hand off her mouth.

"I-I don't know." She said, afraid she didn't sound too authentic. But why was he bothering to keep up the charade? If the power was off, didn't that mean the microphones were too?

Though he couldn't see any better than she, he led her along with his hands to the walls. When they got to the door, there came another click and snap before Naru pulled her through the tiny opening of the barely moved door. Fear crawled at her throat as people stumbled by, shouting to one another, and somewhere in the distance an alarm wailed. She could hear pounding on the walls and perhaps Mandy's voice yelling somewhere behind it all.

"N-Naru—"

He gave her hand a harsh squeeze and she closed her mouth with a snap.

Several times she bumped into bodies running by, and each time she had to choke back a squeak to reveal who she was. Just as she was wondering how Naru knew where he was going, there came another squeal of metal and the first dim line of light caught her eye. He pulled her through another cracked door and let go of her hand.

The light came from the dead LED ring of light at the bottom of the tank, glowing like the screen of an old tube TV after it had been turned off. What little she saw was only bright enough to show the bubbles of water and where the counters of controls blocked her way.

Naru let go of her hand and disappeared behind these counters. She bundled her hands into a tight knot beneath her chin. Any moment now the door behind them would snap open and the guards would come through, weapons drawn, mouths open wide to shout warnings while looking too much like one of those deep water, predatory angler fish without their lures.

A curse, a chink, and Naru reappeared before the dying glow of the tank. His fingers found her arm, then felt their way up to the collar around her neck. With a steadying hand on her neck, he wedged something cold, like scissors, between the collar and her tender skin. He made hushing noises to calm her when she started to tremble violently.

A loud snap, like breaking bone, and the arms of the collar slipped away. Naru took her hand and they were once more off into the darkness and chaos.

When next he slipped her through a door, the darkness fell away to the new light of a dying day. Twilight had long past, and the only remains of the sun was the grey-blue light on the horizon. Stars glittered high above them and no moon shone.

They both stumbled to the peer. The water licked at the docks lips. High tide.

"Take us to the left end of the grating as quick as you can."

"But, Naru—"

"Please, trust me."

So, even though she had an awful feeling in the pit of her stomach that weighed too close to premonition, she did as he said. Before she had even managed to regain her breath from the pain of the change she had Naru held tight against her chest as she bulleted over the bay's forest of coral. Fish bolted, but at her frantic speed some couldn't move fast enough, and their bodies slapped against her face and shoulders.

She took a great gulp of water. Air rushed to her head, along with a punch of adrenalin. Left. She had to go to the left end, he said.

But what was he thinking? How could this help? The chains of the grating couldn't be cut, and even without electricity, by the time they managed to dig deep enough to swim under the power line, both of them would be found.

The thrum of water speeding past her ears reminded her suddenly of blood.

She didn't like this. This couldn't work.

Naru tugged at her arms and she surfaced in time for him to take a great, ragged suck of air. She waited till he met her eye before diving under and speeding off once more.

They hit the grate in record time. Naru threw himself at the grating, gasping for air as he scrambled about it like a jungle gym, his blue scrubs sticking to him like a second skin. In one hand was something she hadn't even realized he had brought along, which seemed phenomenal considering she had been holding him so close.

Tree trimmers, but strange ones. They had short handles and the blades had a wicked, industrial gleam to them. Had that been what he cut her collar with?

Impressive they may be, Mai doubted they could still cut the chains that made up the grating. But rather than proceeding to attack the grating with the cutters, he turned to her.

"Straight beneath me, right where the grating meets the cement walls, you're going to find a big dip, a hole, if you may, lined with mollusks. Keep following the wall—you listening to me Mai?" Because a snap behind them where the rest of the bunker was had distracted her. "Right to the bottom, you'll find a bit of the power line connected to the grating. Cut the power line. You have to be quick, they could turn on the power any moment now." He held out the cutters.

"But doesn't water conduct—"

"Mai!"

She flinched, grabbed the cutters, and dived down so quick she nearly smashed her face into the wall she was to follow. Down down, into the dark depths, where the rainbow coral didn't wish to go.

He had been right. The mollusks made a cone of sorts down to where the grating ended and a thick, black line broke the blanket of chains. The mollusks had kept the sand from being pushed in by the ocean currents. Heart pounding, body hot with the desperate attempt not to think about what should happen to her if the electricity should turn on while she was cutting—or what if it didn't cut—or what the hell they were both doing—she stabbed the cutters down like Excalibur and brought the arms together with all her strength.

The power cord put up a fight, but gave a final twang and sprang apart, as though it had been rubber. The bits of chain connected to it curled up as the tension the power cord had been holding broke, leaving a tiny space between mollusks and grating to squeeze under.

Teeth chattering, she shot back up to the surface to Naru.

"It's cut, we can fit."

A loud bang, and across the bay the Triple A institution flashed to life like a sleeping dragon suddenly opening its eyes. On the distant pier, against the brilliant light, she could just make out a dark silhouette in a lab coat.

"Mai! Hurry! I don't know how long I'll be able to hold my breath!"

It was awfully deep. She suddenly hesitated.

"Naru-"

"I can do it! You're going to need my connections to stay safe once we're outside, so just take me!"

Praying he could do what he said, and hoping her speed wouldn't fail them, she embraced him and dove back down. But though she moved as quick as she could, diving with Naru in her arms was a lot different than swimming across the surface with him. He was buoyant, and every molecule of air in his body fought to return to the surface. Just as she thought she'd have to turn back or risk killing him, she saw the opening, and flung herself for it. Mollusk shells scraped against her, the hard edges of their closed lips scratching every bit of her skin they could reach. She heard cloth tear and her dress loosened.

Naru's buoyancy that had fought so hard against her going down pushed her faster to the surface now.

She couldn't believe her relief when he came up violently coughing water out of his mouth. As he struggled to clear out his lungs, she back paddled with him, desperate to get as far from the wall as possible. A new feeling had overcome her as the wide expanse of the ocean caught her attention. For a moment she couldn't breathe. Had the walls always made her feel so cramped? How had she ever lived in confined as she had been? How could she have ever thought the water in that closed off bay could feel the same as open sea?

Something hit her shoulder. It dug deep, cold, and hard. Even as her vision blurred and her tail started to sink down without her, she saw the fat, fletched dart.


	26. Break Out Yer ATVs, Nerd on the Run

**Gather close all ye who seek relief from cliffhangers...**

Chapter 25

 _"_ _In some of the legends of the Pacific Islands, it is said that human beings are descended from both mermaids and mermen. It seems somewhere back in time, their tails somehow dropped off, and people were magically able to walk on land. A good example of this is the creator god Vatea, who was usually depicted as being half-human and half-fish." –_ Vatea, _Wikipedia_

The arms that had been holding him up as he fought to breathe slipped away. He caught himself with a quick paddle before going under. Chest aching and already starting to shiver, he turned just in time to see Mai sink beneath the surface, her eyes closed. A bright, bronze dart stuck out of her right shoulder.

He cursed and grabbed her arm. Unfortunately, she was as much weight as a girl with a muscle thick tail could be expected to be, and he quickly found himself fighting just to keep his own head up in the clear. He'd have to pull her onto her back, keep moving, reach shore—

But he hadn't planned for this. Mai was suppose to be awake in his plans, and said land was not only on the other side of the looming, cement compound that protected the bay, but then past that. A mile at the very least. Alone he could have done it, maybe, given that there were two cement walls to protect them from the ocean waves and currents this time. But with Mai in tow, unconscious…

His leg started to cramp and he choked on water.

Then a blazing, white eye of a spotlight flicked on at the top of the wall.

His stomach sank. This was it. They'd find them, kick him out, and lock down Mai tighter than ever. And while he had had a chance getting her out from the inside, getting back inside to rescue her…that was another story. Even he wasn't so arrogant to not realize that.

His vision of her by a hearth, her hand in his hair as he read, came to his mind. Something cramped in his chest like a Charlie Horse, and for a moment he wondered if he had accidentally breathed in water again.

A small cold hand grabbed his shoulder. He had been so intent on the roving eye of the spotlight he let out a shout of alarm.

But then he saw the second mermaid slip past. Even on the moonless night her pale skin shown, and her too-big eyes in her sunken face almost glowed. If he hadn't been so terrified of humans, he would have wondered if he had jumped out of the frying pan and into the fire.

But she was giving him a gentle smile.

"Drop her. Get to shore."

Naru shook his head and held Mai tighter. He struggled to explain, but it took all his breath just to keep afloat with her dead weight.

"It's okay," the pale mermaid said. "But first," something flashed in the distant blaze of the spotlight as it roved back and forth, growing ever nearer.

She was holding the clippers. Mai must have dropped them after she cut the power line. The mermaid pointed to her own neck, where a black collar waited.

"She'll be okay," she said once more.

Trembling, and wishing this wasn't his only chance, he forced his cold hands to drop Mai into the deep water below and grabbed the clippers. He forced himself not to watch as his copper mermaid vanished into the dark waters below and took the clippers.

The spotlight wove closer. He could almost see the reflection of the other mermaid's scales now, but they seemed colorless in the murky green water. She held very still as he wedged the clipper beneath the collar and gave it a sharp snip.

The moment he pulled away her hand flew up, tore off the broken collar, and flung it towards the spotlight. Before he could see if they noticed, or go for a dive down for Mai, the mermaid grabbed him in a hard, bony grip and dragged him gracelessly through the water. Unlike with Mai, this mermaid had no residual warmth or softness in the least. All of her was thin muscle and bone, and the tail that thumped against him as she pulled them both through the water would leave a nasty, full body bruise once this was over.

But, sooner than he expected, he was being flung forward into shallow waves and his frozen hands caught him against sand. His heart was racing, a cry was at his throat. Mai had sunk—Mai at the bottom of the ocean—Mai being found and fished up—

"You'll find a small cove just south of here. Only the top of its entrance can be seen at low tide, but there's a small enough of a vent to allow air in there for one person to wait. Meet me there tomorrow evening. I'll have her then. I couldn't tell you until you got that collar off." He couldn't see her face in the darkness of the waves, but he could hear her smile. "You figured it out. I can't believe you figured it out about the collars without my help. Thank you for cutting the power line."

He stumbled to his numb legs. "You're Jamie. You're the one who planted those mollusks to keep the hole open, aren't you?"

"It wasn't my idea." Her voice had hushed, almost blending in with the waves. "Don't worry about Mai, I will do everything I can to keep her safe. Just don't get caught yourself."

"I'll do my best."

A wave crashed into his knees and they buckled. By the time he managed to get back on his feet Jamie was gone.

Numb, shaking, and trying to avoid biting his own tongue with his chattering teeth, Kazuya stumbled onto the craggy remains of a shore. In the starlight he could just see where he was going, though more than once his numb hands failed to warn him of an especially sharp rock and he'd get cut, or his frozen feet would stumble over. By the time he finally found a steep, grassy slope towards a highway, he was beginning to wonder if being found would be the least of his worries. It was getting harder to think and curling up on the ground to sleep was sounding more and more appealing.

Just as he reached up to anchor his bleeding hand into a tuft of grass, headlights brightened the road above. He just managed to duck behind a boulder just as it roared by in a blaze of lights and engines. He glanced back where it had come from to see what could only be the rest of the Triple A bunker, orange with the artificial glow of industrial illumination and dotted with white circles of spotlights.

Change of plans. He couldn't go on the road. But then, could he follow the beach until…just how far away was civilization? And then, how would he avoid being caught when that was exactly where they'd expect him to go?

Cursing, he popped one of his frozen, scraped fingers into his hands and set off down the slowly widening shore at a brisk jog. When headlights would catch the corner of his eye, he dropped to the ground behind the nearest cover he could find. He continued on like this as the tide drew out and a thin sliver of a moon finally rose over the horizon. After a while, the exercise managed to pump more warmth into his body and he tripped less. The steam of his hot breath thawed his lips and calmed the chatters. Now if only the damn, wet scrubs would stop chaffing in the worst places possible, he'd have this whole on the run business down.

He had just made it around a particular outcrop of rock and cliff when what hid behind it caught his attention. There, on the water, not far off from shore, was a cream yellow yacht with only a single light on. It held steady in his vision, despite the rocky waves.

If his heart hadn't been hammering, it might have leapt. Was it possible? Could it be at all possible that maybe, just maybe…

Kazuya glanced back up the cliff side to where the road waited above. Trucks and vans with blazing fog lights still passed now and then, and just a minute ago he had heard what could have only been a pair of ATVs. He had no clue where he was heading. He was wet, freezing, and come daylight there'd be little place to hide. And while Jamie may have given him her word that Mai would be taken care of until tomorrow evening, the Charlie Horse cramp ache twisted in his chest at the thought of being captured and withheld from ever seeing her again. There would be no more nights of slim fingers asleep against his scalp, no passionate blazing eyes, no strokes of silky fins…

He looked back out at the yacht. It was an older model, but in the darkness he couldn't be sure it was his own. And even if he swam out there, what if it wasn't who he thought who was on board? What if it was his old, mutinous crew who had always worked for the Triple A?

The growl of ATVs drew closer. He thought of Mai, back lighted by sunlight and dancing water above him.

With the skill of years of physical discipline and practice, Kazuya sprinted into the waves and dove in. The shore cut off sharply from beneath his feet, but he swam on, ignoring the cold water.

The still yacht was farther out than he thought. But even as his already overtaxed muscles and lungs burned and protested, he swam on. He wondered if that was the ATVs he could hear behind him.

He made it. He slapped his numb palm against the side.

"Lin!" he screamed hoarsely. "Lin!"

One of the doors flew open, bleeding light out onto the water behind Kazuya.

"Lin!"

A dark shape loomed far above him off the railing. He squinted, but he couldn't tell who it was. His head pounded with blood and exhaustion and cold. Were they tall? Or were they broad and thick?

He couldn't tell.

A flush of water ran into his back, smashing him face first into the boat. He tasted blood in his mouth. Everything was spinning. Water was up his nose, stinging with brine. His legs. He couldn't feel his legs.

The black figure sunk closer, filling up his vision, blocking the light.

His last thought was of Mai.

 **...and suffer more. Muwahahaha.**


	27. He Says It

**EVERYONE! MY BOOK HAS FINALLY HIT THE BOOKSTORES! You can get it on Amazon or order it from your local book store by looking up the title, "Out of Duat" or its ISBN number: 9781849148139.**

 **I'm working on getting info on when the ebook will be ready for it, but they so suck at communication. Either way, if you get a copy, shoot me a review or a PM so I can thank you and maybe send you a thank you card or, I dunno, worship you.**

 **Anyhoo, here's an early update to let you all know! I hope you get the chance to check out my first ancient Egypt fantasy novel-with a nice splash of romance 3**

Chapter 26

 _"_ _She awoke_ _  
_ _to find her fishtail_ _  
_ _clean gone_ _  
_ _but in the bed with her_ _  
_ _were two long, cold thingammies._ _  
_ _You'd have thought they were tangles of kelp_ _  
_ _or collops of ham. "_

 _-BY NUALA NÍ DHOMHNAILL_

She was cold. Wave after wave of cold pushed at her, rolling her over and over. She wanted it to stop so she could sleep, so she could try to be warm.

The hard rods that grabbed at her and yanked her through the cold didn't feel much better. If only she could fight against them, then she could sink back down to the sand, burrow deeper, finally find some warmth.

Then a sound. A beautiful sound that dropped honey-like warmth into her belly.

Jamie. Singing Jamie.

More hard rods caught her up, carrying her, except this time these were blessedly warm. She lifted her face up one set to find, to her delight, a whole plate of soft warmth. The next thing she knew, it wasn't a plate, but a chest and arms that held her close and thrummed with heart beats.

And then she could finally sleep. Such warmth, and smelling of lavender.

Mother had always loved lavender.

She sat at the counter of their one room apartment, watching as her mom mopped the floor and sang songs by the _Carpenters_. Halfway through a song she'd break into that one Mai could never remember all the words to: _Ground control to major Tom. Ground control to major Tom. Take your protein pills and put your helmet on. Ground control to major Tom._

Mai was doing homework. Strange. When was the last time she had done homework? Why was she thinking that? She did homework every day.

"So, like any boys?"

Mai sighed. Her mother asked this now and then, acting excited to hear, though Mai knew she dreaded the answer. Just as she opened her mouth to tell her the usual, "No," because, frankly, it had only taken two months of dating assholes to take all the fun out of relationships, her tongue twisted and out came, "yes."

As she expected, her mom paused in her cleaning of the kitchen to look up at her, both wincing and smiling.

"He ain't like that Jordon fellow, is he?"

Just as Mai started to wonder who the hell she was saying 'yes' about, the answer came to her. That's right, there was a boy; tall, dark, unbelievably handsome, and brains to match the best.

"Not at all," she said. "He's actually a real jerk when you first meet him, but I think that's to be expected from guys who are too book smart for their own good."

Her mom said nothing, though she leaned her hands on the handle of the mop to show she was interested. A small part of Mai wondered why she hadn't finished mopping yet. How long had she been singing? And just what was her homework on again?

But her mouth was still going. "I suppose anyone would become arrogant with all that stuff going for them. Looks, money, brains, though…I think arrogance hurts him more than it could ever hurt anyone around him. Since he thinks he's better than everyone, he's all alone on his little plane. I don't think he realizes it, but he's lonely. Really lonely." She hesitated. "No. I think he is starting to realize it."

"What makes you say that?" asked Mom.

"Because," Mai touched her eyes. When had that happened? When had he touched her eyes so gently? More memories trickled in, slippery as wet soap: Naru staying up late by her bedside, books all about him, notes of lines that she now knew were diagrams of electric lines and voltage. His soft hair in her fingers. The strained twist to the muscles about his eyes as he asked her to please tell him what to do, because it was hurting him to see her in pain that way.

Her fingers fell down to her smiling mouth. "He tries harder than anyone I know, Mom."

"Tries hard? At what?"

"Everything. It's just how he lives. I don't think he knows how not to. One day he's going to find something he can't get just by hard work, and I hope I'm there when it happens, because he's going to implode." Then she was laughing. "It's going to be great."

Her mother's face had melted into a rare smile. It was rare because her mother was always smiling, which took up the space this particular happiness and warmth needed to show.

"You must really like him," she said.

But this confused Mai. What was she talking about? She hated Naru. Freaking asshole stuffed her in a tank and treated her like crap. He was the whole reason she was in this mess. If he had just left her in the ocean…

Mess? What mess?

And if he had left her in the ocean, she probably would have died anyways.

As it all came back to her and her mother's kitchen faded away, Mai opened her sticky eyes. The trickling slap of water against stone sounded louder than she had ever heard it, and whatever light that showed the stone ceiling to her played the reflective, underwater lines she knew all too well. But the wet lap against her fins and painful chill of air against her gills told her she wasn't underwater.

Her eyes passed across the stone walls momentarily to see her tail half dipped in the water. A murky green tail lounged some feet away. She could smell the faint scent of lavender. At the edge of the water with her arms cushioning her head on the rock was the mousy headed Jamie, who met her eyes sleepily.

"How are you feeling?" Jamie asked.

Before she answered, she took in the cave once more. The entrance went down into the water, which glowed from the light outside. Barnacles and the like speckled the walls, which still dripped sea water now and then.

Mai's heart was bouncing sporadically. "Jamie? You're…"

"Still alive? 'Course."

"But you haven't come out for food in—in—"

"Weeks? You know merpeople live in the ocean, right?"

"But, how…?"

"Clams. Oysters. Mollusks. Once you get over the algae taste, they're actually not that bad raw."

Mai frowned as she tried to sit up. Her limbs felt oddly unweidly, as though they had been filled up with sand. "Isn't that bad for you?"

"Well, I figured I could take that risk. Besides, I'm a mermaid, aren't I? Can't have a fire underwater, so raw seafood isn't going to hurt us as much as humans. And, if it killed me," she shrugged. "Not like I was doing much besides taking care of mollusks anyways."

"You made that hole?"

"I did a lot of things. Sorry I didn't tell you. The collars had microphones." She tapped her neck with a smile.

Mai's head spun. She put a hand to her eyes where a pounding threatened to dig into a full blown headache and tried to breathe steadily. She felt like crap.

"Wh-where are we? Where's Na—I mean, Kazuya?"

"You mean your companion?" Jamie stretched out her arms before her like a cat. "He should be here soon. You've been sleeping all day, you know that? Those tranqs really are something. You might feel a little nauseous."

Yeah, Mai felt that, but it wasn't anything bad. It was mostly the heavy urge to lay down and down until she pushed through the rock and to the other side of the world.

"Damn."

Jamie nodded, as though she had said something sagely. "Amen. Can't tell you how many times I've been hit with that one."

"They've had to tranq you?"

"Oh yeah. You don't think I just let them have my baby, did you? Nearly sang half the facility to the bottom of the bay."

Mai found more pleasure in that thought then was healthy. She took another steady breath. Yes, the pounding eased a bit when she focused on breathing. Maybe if she lay back down—ah, yes, there we go. Ugh. But she didn't want to go back asleep, especially if Jamie was right and she had been out since their escape last night. But just as she thought that, she could feel herself drifting to the hush of the waves on the rocky shore of the cave.

A crackle of something hard against the stones woke her up with a start. Her eyelids stuck with sleep, though, and then she felt cold, wet hands on her face.

"Mai, wake up now or I'm slapping you."

She knew that irritating, bossy tone. "Alright, alright, hold on to your panties, Naru."

The moment she spoke, Naru let out a loud hiss of air from his nose and his hands slipped from her face. She opened her eyes to find him plopped into a seat at her side in full scuba gear, complete with yellow fins and black suit. His goggles lay a foot or so away from him on the stone. So that's what had made all that noise against the rocks.

As she sat up, she tried to ignore how, even with his dark hair wet and sticking to his face, he still looked way too handsome for comfort.

 _If only you knew, Mom._

At least a bit more of her strength had returned to allow her to sit up without her head threatening to explode. The light from the mouth of the cave had dimmed only a bit, from bright white to a russet gold. So evening was approaching.

Jamie yawned, curling her fins in on her tail.

"Alright. Since you're here, I guess I can leave now."

Mai flinched. "Leave? Already? But where are you going?"

"To meet up with Rain so we can find our daughter." She pushed off from the rocks, giving Mai a sad smile as though to say 'what else?'

But before Mai could stop her, or even ask how she knew where her companion, Rain, could be, Naru broke in with a scowl.

"Funny, I'd think you'd want to give more of an effort to help the girl in your old position."

Jamie paused from where she had been about to dive, frowning. The skin held too tight to her slender face, and Mai could see the bounce of her tendons along her jaws.

"What do you mean?"

"Didn't you hear? One of the Amandas got knocked up."

Mai winced. "Did you have to say it like that?"

But it had the effect Naru must have been aiming, for Jamie's eyes widened so large, they seemed about ready to pop right out. A pale hand rose from the water to touch her face.

"But—wha—"

"What can you do? Nothing. Though, if you do as I say, I'm pretty sure you could find a file in that hellhole to tell you where they've stashed your daughter. Sure would save you a lot of time, don't you think?"

Mai scowled. "You don't have to be an asshole about it, Naru."

"My name is Kazuya."

"Not when you're being an asshole it isn't!"

"I just saved your life! Can't you at least call me by my name?"

Jamie grimaced. "If you're done, I'm waiting. Kazuya, Naru, whatever it is, even if you managed to get us out, how do you suppose you can get us back in? And before you run away with your confidence, you did have help. That hole didn't magically appear."

"Easy. Cut through the chain."

They both gave him deadpanned looks. So much for genius. Even if he did find a tool that could cut through old, seaweed encrusted chain as thick as his thigh, the whole facility would be on the lookout for Mai and him, and they'd probably be even expecting them to come back to play the 'hero.' Not to mention that, by now, the hole would have been found and refilled by sand, which would only be pushed back by the ocean water.

On seeing their reactions, he raised his eyes to the ceiling as though begging some God to give him patience for their stupidity.

"Really, sometimes I think you two expect everything to be so James Bond. That's just the general gist of my goal. Of course there's going to be a distraction of this and that, which is why two mermaids will always be better than one." He frowned. "But getting in and out isn't the real problem."

"It isn't?" said Mai.

"Triple A is a government funded and run facility. If they get any proof that we have sabatoged them—because, frankly, it won't be quite the leap to presume it to be us—then we'll have God knows what you Yanks use for a serious police force on our arses."

"The FBI?" said Jamie dryly.

"Whatever. Point is there'll be nothing to protect us from that. So, that will take a few days on my part. Can I ask you to be apart from your beloved for that long?"

Despite his hints of sarcasm, Jamie nodded. "If it means getting that info, yes. Even if I can just get the name they've put her under, that should be enough."

"Can't we just hack them?" asked Mai.

Naru opened his mouth, probably to tell her that, although he had many skills and expertise, computers weren't one of them. But then he paused. His eyebrows rose. A second later he had his face in his hands.

Then he said the three most precious words in which Mai would remember for a long time to come.

"I'm an idiot."

 **If you get a chance to read my book, please leave a review! I don't got any yet...But yeah I got excited to tell you all this so I updated early. :) so enjoy your extra chapter this week! I'm sorry for the cliffhanger pain.**


	28. Can Only Go Without a Fight For So Long

**Here's this week's update, mates! I hope you like it! And when you get a mo, check out my debut novel on Amazon, "Out of Duat."**

 **Chapter 27**

 _"_ _In 2012, a TV special called "Mermaids: The Body Found" renewed interest in mermaids. It presented the story of scientists finding proof of real mermaids in the oceans. It was fiction but was presented in a fake-documentary format that seemed realistic. If the program fooled people, it's because it was intended to." –Benjamin Radford, "Mermaids & Mermen: Facts & Legends"_

Theoretically, any computer could be hacked. Where the black web was concerned, all you had to know was the precise address. And while many things came easy to Kazuya, he found himself sitting long enough at computers for research to not want to spend any more trying to figure out how they worked. And while he trusted that, given a few weeks, he could become a pseudo-passable hacker, he figured most of that particular skill was learned on the job, not in text books or Wiki pages (otherwise spy grade hackers would appear over night).

Even with his disinterest, he should have at least thought of computer hacking as a viable option. It hadn't been while inside the Triple A, where resources had been limited and he'd been watched like psyche ward patient. But outside, on the other hand...

He really was the biggest moron. Cutting through the chain was still a good plan B, of course, so he still wanted Jamie to help out, but actually disabling the Triple A enough to make it a walk in the park should have been easy.

But, then again, he could only guess that it could happen. As no computer expert, hacking could be much more powerless than how it appeared in the movies.

It also embarrassed him slightly to have to depend on movies for knowledge about anything.

Once night fell, he and the two other mermaids swam back out into the ocean where Lin waited in the yacht. When the taciturn assistant had pulled his employer on board early that morning, it was to find him frozen and half conscious from having mashed his face into the boat. Kazuya somehow blubbered enough to let his assistant know to steer the yacht as far from those waters as possible, though his assistant had told him, upon awaking, that the yacht would have a hard time being recognized. After receiving Kazuya's warning email of being kidnapped, along with when and where, Lin's old instincts from modern gorilla warfare in North Korea had come into play. He stripped the yacht of its old vin number, given it one from an old, unusable boat in the junk yard, painted over the name, and added a few clever lines of color to make it unrecognizable.

Then he'd taken every spare bit of metal he could get with his left over pocket change and sharpened them each into nasty, jagged swords of various shapes. They tinkled from the ceiling in the back of the Captain's quarters.

When Kazuya had asked why he hadn't just use the money in his account to get real weapons, or even better, get a hold of his parents, Lin gave him a stiff shake of his head. In any sort of attack, letting your enemy know your position was as good as dead. At least, in this modern day an age, with guns and bombs of all sorts were available at your fingertips. Accessing your bank account, where cameras and the like watched your every move, would be too risky. Phones could be tapped and credit cards traced, and Lin had supposed it to be a last resort to call the Mr. and Mrs. Shibuya should he be unable to return their son.

Kazuya thought his assistant had been a mite bit extreme, but then, he had hired him for a reason. One doesn't get as good at defending and hand to hand combat by training in a studio. For, as Lin said in quiet moments between him and his boss, often the best way of defeating their enemy when technology gave them the advantage was to get in close and quick. It wasn't all that remarkable how soft or vulnerable man became once technology made him feel safe.

Even so, Kazuya had Lin take down the curtain of blades from the Captain's quarters before helping him turn the boat south. While grateful for his assistant's paranoia, he didn't know what good a bunch of junk yard swords would be.

Once they got the mermaids onboard, Kazuya gave the signal and Lin turned his boat northeast, towards the open arms of the States.

In order to do this right, they were going to need a hacker.

Which was why Mai found him late that night in the boat's kitchen hunched over his glowing laptop. She eyeballed the mug of black coffee besides him with distaste.

"Are you trying to be an insomniac? Or have you always been one?"

"Only when I got a job to do." He picked up his coffee, took a sip, and made a face at the bitterness. He had always been one for tea and didn't have the patience to try and sweeten the coffee to his tastes. Coffee was his practical choice of beverage, not a treat. "What do you want?"

"Clothes. If you have any." She picked at the damp red gown, which had been torn down the side and was now being held together by stray strands. He let his eyes linger a bit on the pieces of exposed skin before looking away quickly. Wouldn't do to be distracted.

"Upstairs. Door at the end. There should be a dresser in there, take what you want."

"Thanks."

When she hesitated, he turned away from the screen to glance at her. She had her eyes averted and her hands folded in front of her. With her hair in strings from seawater, the red gown sticking to her curves, and her copper-scale dusted legs, she appeared unexplainably adorable and vulnerable. The heat rising up his neck unnerved him.

"What is it?" he asked, none-too-kindly.

She flinched, then scowled. "No need to sound so grumpy about it."

"I'm running on caffeine and willpower, so I can be a grouch if I please. Out with it."

Her face colored with passion, as it so often did, and he fully expected her to start yelling at him for being rude or some other nonsense. But, instead, her eyes dropped down to the side once more, making the red flush across her nose and cheeks seem more bashful than angry. If he hadn't known better, he might be in danger of finding her even cuter than before.

"You're going to go back and save them, right? Mandy and the others?"

He forced his eyes away from her with a grimace. "If I had my way I'd let them figure it out on their own. I'm a scientist, not an expert of espionage."

In the few moments where she didn't react, he worried for a moment he may have said too much. He could handle her little fits, even found them amusing. But if she was downright upset, he'd be out of his depth.

But when she did speak, her voice was small.

"Is that true?"

"Is what true?" He took another sip of the coffee. Nasty.

"That you could—that you want to just leave them there, after knowing what's going to happen to them."

He winced. Ah crap. Why couldn't she just be angry?

"Mai," he had to choose his words carefully—but hadn't he just told her he was a simple scientist? "I am, by nature, very honest. I'm not going to lie to you. At the same time, please try to understand my position and just how out of my depth I am when it comes to confronting these people. I've never done anything like this before, I've never had any intention with getting in trouble with the United States government, and I could be threatening not only my own life, but that of my entire family in order to go back to a bunch of strangers which, frankly, I don't much care for."

"But they aren't strangers!"

Her voice thundered out across the room. He cringed. He was losing control of the situation. What was it about her that always did this? Control over the argument, control over his own emotions, control over his life.

"Calm down, I _am_ doing something about it."

"Not out of choice!"

"There isn't much choice when it's needed."

"Yeah, only a choice between what's right and wrong! What's so hard about that?"

"I think you misunderstood me—"

"No, I understand you perfectly," the color was back to her cheeks and had spread, except this time, there was nothing cute or bashful about the way she set her blazing eyes on him. He found himself unable to look away despite wanting to. "You could care less about what happened to them, but because you don't want to look like the bad guy you're going to lazily wander back home and hire someone else to do the job for you. It's easier to not get your hands dirty that way."

Something very hard, very sharp, and very cold pierced his chest.

"And to think I actually hoped you had a reason to rescue me other than for your stupid little research project—we got a deal, after all, and you can't leave that treasure cove with your evidence, eh? But no, you really are, in the end, just an arrogant, selfish, stupid narcissist!"

The silence vibrated with the last word. Her eyes, those warm, chocolate brown eyes that always made him think of all the comforts of home, shone with angry tears. And he could only stare back.

So this is what she thought of him.

In a desperate need to somehow defend himself against the aching ice that stabbed deeper and deeper into his chest, he said, "You misunderstood me. I'm only hiring someone else because I don't have the skills necessary to save them, and whether I want to or not, I'm still making the choice. Isn't that what matters?"

"You can choose all you want, but how you feel and act are two different things."

In a burst of frustration, he near shouted, "My feelings? God, what the hell do my feelings have to do with this?"

But she had already turned away with a stomp of pink feet and slammed the door shut behind her. The pots hanging over the stove rattled and a serving spoon toppled from its hook on the wall.

Kazuya just stopped himself from slamming his face into his laptop. Forget his lack of empathy, the girl didn't make any sense. No sense at all. All he had been saying—gah, he didn't even know anymore! Look! Her nonsense was contagious! Here he was going out of his way to do the right thing and she had to start throwing a fit over his feelings? Hadn't he been plenty honest about that? What, was he suppose to _like_ all this? Was he suppose to _like_ that the past hour of scouring the internet had only proved to show that he hadn't a clue on how to find a hacker, let alone be one? Was he suppose to _like_ that all he wanted to do was grab her and go far as possible from the torturing hell hole, and yet he was planning on going back? Was he suppose to _like_ that she could possibly be torn away from him permanently to leave the ghost of her beauty and touch haunting him forever?

He slapped his laptop closed. Screw it. He'd have Lin find the damn hacker. He was going to bed. If she wasn't going to appreciate his efforts, he at least wasn't going to lose any sleep over it.


	29. Complications of Mermaid Hygiene

**Aw man, guys, what a weekend. I think I just want to squash my face into my pikachu pillow and cry.**

 **R &R**

Chapter 28

 _"_ _Not everything is a mermaid that dives into the water." - Russian Proverb_

It had been a long time since she had enjoyed a hot shower. Since the itching had begun, she had only ever been in lukewarm baths, and once the transformations came, she had avoided bathing altogether.

But once she had dug out some of Naru's sweats and a t-shirt from his drawers, she had returned to her now spider-free room with tears pouring down her cheeks. More than ever, she just wanted to hide behind a locked door and let hot water pound on her face till she forgot.

So even though she had just been a mermaid a mere hour or so before, she turned on the hot water and stepped in. There, she closed her eyes as her body switched over, and then let the steam ease the pain of air on her gills. She had to turn the water down as her sensitivity to temperature returned, but it wasn't much, and she was allowed to pull up her tail to her face and properly mope.

The hot water felt beyond good.

She had found a bottle of shampoo in Naru's quarters as well, which she swiped without a second thought. She used some of it now to scrub hard at her sea-crusted hair. It took three washings for all the bits of sand and salt to be completely free. Sadly, there wasn't any conditioner, and even though the bottle claimed to be one of those 2-in-1 deals, the conditioners in those never really worked. She didn't even know why they bothered to make them anymore. Probably for idiots like Naru who didn't really pay attention to the difference.

Once the last of the suds ran down the drain, Mai dug her knuckles into her eyes even though, as a mermaid, she couldn't really cry, opals or otherwise. Why had she blown up like that? At the time it had made sense, but she couldn't even remember now what exactly she had been thinking, only that the guttural reaction to what he could be saying came so swift and strong she didn't have time to ignore it.

"Please be a narcissist," she muttered to the stall walls, but the words didn't make her feel any better.

Because Naru, despite the nickname she had given him, wasn't a narcissist. Arrogant, yes, and because of that naturally prone to appear selfish. But he knew this and did his best to be better. He couldn't understand normal because he was so far from it. He couldn't understand humanity's natural weakness to be idle and scared because he was naturally hard working and fearless.

And, she hated to even think it, but could anyone really blame him for being so arrogant?

And then there was her. Short crusty hair, temperamental, whiney, plain, rash, opinionated, lazy…

But why did that bother her so much? Shouldn't she be glad he wasn't the heartless bastard she had thought him?

Without opening her eyes, she felt up the shower wall and turned off the water, which had started to run cold. She breathed in the last of the steam as water drops tickled down her skin to the floor. Her copper tail twisted and bent out of the tub, its usually flowing fins limp and thin like a bundle of colorless seaweed. It was only then she realized she had forgotten to ask for towels.

Great. Now she'd have to wait until she drip dried. Lovely. And after all the effort Yui went through to clean out the cabin and make the bed for her, she'd be sleeping in the tub tonight.

With a loud sigh she let her head fall back on the tub. Just one more reason why this whole situation sucked.

She was just starting to get cold, but exhausted enough to nod off anyways, when a quiet knock jerked her awake.

"Mai? You okay?"

Jamie? "I was just stupid and forgot towels."

Jamie chuckled. "Let me guess, stuck in there with a big fish tail?"

"Yeah." If it weren't for the fact she had been through that mermaid nightmare of Triple A, she would have laughed out loud at the peculiarity of the conversation.

"There's a spare blanket here. Can I come in?"

"Please."

A few minutes later, the door clicked and Jamie came in with a ragged, but clean, cotton blanket. Mai folded her arms over her breasts to preserve some idea of modesty. Together, they wiped down the last of the water and folded Mai up into the dry cotton. While Mai waited for the transformation to kick in, Jamie took up a seat on the toilet that use to be a pit of spiders. Dressed in baggy spare clothes her painfully skinny body wasn't so obvious, and the change of scene from her lonely rock in the bay to the warm bathroom did wonders for her complexion. Add that she had found a brush and pulled her mousy hair into a pony tail and she looked like a different woman.

"What brings you here?" asked Mai.

"Couldn't sleep. Also heard you showering and got to wondering if you had managed to get out or not."

Mai wrinkled her nose. Was she that easy to predict?

"So, what, you're too excited?"

Jamie nodded with a small smile. "And apprehensive. There's no saying nothing happened to Rain or that whoever Naru will find will be able to get the information we need. Also," she looked to the side at the empty toilet paper dispenser. "I feel guilty for leaving the others behind. Even if there wasn't any time or anything I could do, I still feel like I should have at least tried. And then Mandy…"

They had a moment of silence. There wasn't anything left to say to that.

"I also wanted to ask if you'd like to go for a swim with me tomorrow."

Mai grimaced. "After all that happened? I don't know if I want to be a mermaid anymore."

Jamie shook her head feverishly, her doe-like eyes wide. "That's what I was worried about. Mai, the ocean is a part of you. You can't blame your bad experiences on yourself, that was done by horrible, greedy men, never by you. Which is why I think it's important that you go for a swim with me tomorrow. It will help. Therapy, if you must."

Mai couldn't help but smile at that. "Is that what you were doing all that time by the grate? Therapy?"

"In a way. Also, tragedy has a knack of making you feel alone in the world." Jamie reached out a pale hand to Mai's tail, her touch feather light on her scales. "You helped me, actually, coming down there. Singing with me."

"But I've never even had a baby or lost it—"

Jamie was shaking her head again, eyes once more wide with earnestness. "No. Not that. Everyone in the world has their tragedy. Everyone has their hardships. Even those who seem to have the perfect life, and even those who don't realize it. You mustn't give in to the temptation to compare your hardships to someone else's and then say yours aren't worth it. Suffering is suffering. We're all in this together."

Mai stared, impressed, and touched all the same. The words the other girls had used to excuse why it was so hard for them to talk to Jamie returned to her. What did you say to someone who had gone through something tremendously horrible? What did you say to someone who lost a loved one, if you yourself haven't?

"You didn't have to say anything to me, Mai. You were just there. And that made all the difference."

Jaw trembling, and with the faint impression that she was about to finally pay attention to the dark monster waiting in her memories, Mai reached out to touch Jamie's hand. To think the others had just thought her shy.

"Jamie…"

"Yeah?"

"Thanks."

"No prob."

 **Almost forgot! My first born, "Out of Duat," is now on Kindle! So it super cheap. O.O Check it out if you got a mo.**


	30. Open Water is Never Safe

**Someone on facebook posted up a video about a 2 week old baby being rescued from the rubble after being buried for 12 hours. It was meant to be a positive story in the sea of negative stories, but it just slapped into my face what a horrible world I live in, that a little baby would be buried under rubble to cry for 12 hours because...because why? And I have my own little baby...and just hearing the baby cry...but people were helping. But how could anyone not help when you hear a baby crying and a mother wailing?**

 **Not to mention my mind sort of feels like a hopeless black hole right now.**

 **So I'm updating my story early, maybe in hopes that, by reaching out with a story it will work like telepathy and my mind might reach someone else. Then, at least, I won't feel so alone in my own head.**

Chapter 29

 _"_ _Aquamarine is the gemstone of the sea, and it's supposed to be a cherished object for mermaids. In addition to being treasure, people once believed this gemstone came from the tears of mermaids, and it used to be thought to have the power to protect sailors when they were at sea, or when they fell into the water."—Carl Pettit,_ "Ten Things You Probably Didn't Know About Mermaids."

Kazuya made it a point to avoid Mai when he got up that morning. Not that he had to go much out of his way. Without a full crew on the ship, the work of keeping the boat afloat and on a steady course was left up to Lin and him, since the two mermaids were getting much needed recuperation time. And since the only one who had any experience of navigating on the ocean was Lin, Kazuya ended up with the brunt of the grunt work while Lin fine tuned their direction. Add in humid heat and a load of sweat and Mai ended up being the least of his problems. He didn't care if he got skin cancer in twenty years. Kazuya stripped down to his shorts, and where before he avoided the icy sea spray, he now ran from job to job that got as close to the water as physically possible.

Thank God he was at least in shape. But why oh why did he listen to his cheapness and buy such an old boat?

At one point he thought he saw Mai at one end of the deck, frozen in place with her eyes wide, and that made him feel just a little better about the incident in the kitchen. _That's right_ , he thought, _get a nice eyeful._ Granted, she had seen him in a swim suit on more than one occasion in the Triple A, but that was something completely different from seeing him gleaming with sweat on the open ocean.

As though hearing what he was thinking, she closed her mouth and stomped away.

Jamie found him at lunch taking a much needed break with a sandwich in the shade. He could already feel his shoulders starting to sting from sunburn. She asked if they could stop the boat so her and Mai could go for a quick swim. Since this meant he could probably take a break, he nodded and told her to pass the word on to Lin.

He had just finished his sandwich when the growl of the engine died down. The two girls appeared besides the deck, and now it was his turn to do the staring, as both of them were wearing nothing more than long T-shirts. Mai's was just barely long enough, being the more curvy of the two.

Jamie leaned over to tell Mai something, but before she could Mai took a running leap off the bow, leaving Jamie to chase after her and Kazuya hotter than he'd been under the sun hauling old machine parts out of the way. It had only been a brief second, but as she had jumped the T-shirt had ridden just high enough...

He groaned. Maybe he should take a dip in the ocean as well.

Just as he was debating whether or not it was safe to get up, a high voice called him to the side of the boat, where Jamie waved at him from below, eyebrows creased with worry.

"What is it?"

"Mai can't move!"

"What? Is she stuck?"

"No! I think she's afraid of deep water! She's having a panic attack or something, and she's stronger than me so I'm afraid of forcing her anywhere."

It took him a second to register what the mermaid was saying before he had to duck down to hide his laughter. A mermaid afraid of deep water? But then, she had said something about it a while ago, didn't she? Something about not swimming past the shelf?

And why did it seem more adorable than ridiculous? No, it was ridiculous, he wasn't going to lose his mind completely over this girl. He could, however, forgive her for whatever rudeness she had given him the night before. Being afraid of deep water when she was practically a fish—ha!

"Lin, I'm going to need my scuba gear. Where'd you put it?"

The tall man was hunched over the table besides him, where a map was spread out. Without a word he pointed behind him to a closet.

Five minutes later, Kazuya had a tank strapped to his back, flippers, goggles, and the air feed to his mouth. He hadn't bothered with the suit. The idea of trying to put on that slippery monstrosity in this heat had turned him off instantly.

Sure enough, when he tipped over the edge of the yacht, the bite of cold water felt amazing.

Kazuya wasted no time kicking off to the ball of copper scales fins which Jamie paddled about. Water almost slipped past his mouth as the power of his smile threatened to stretch his lips away from the oxygen. He had to part her frills of fins to find her, T-shirt floating about her in the ocean breeze, and her arms tucked over her head, blocking the view of the ocean below her.

He reached through to take hold of one of her wrists. He had never noticed just how thin they were compared to his. Was she really so small? Still smiling, he popped out his oxygen.

"Mai, what are you doing?"

He heard himself, though he also heard his words bubble up and away in the water. Though he was afraid she wouldn't hear him (human vocal chords were made to work air not water, after all), she lifted her face to peer out at him from between her arms.

"Naru?" she whispered.

He took another puff of air as he nodded, then tried again. "Can you hear me?"

She nodded, revealing more of her wide-eyed, terrified look. He knew he should stop smiling, but he just couldn't seem to stop. Even if she were to insult him right now, it would float right over him. "Aren't you suppose to be swimming?"

"Scary," she whimpered. "Please, take me back. Please."

She was being ridiculous. But, in the water, Mai was stronger than him, and he wouldn't be able to force her to do anything. At the same time, he couldn't just take her back to the boat like she asked. This was a part of her nature. For a mermaid to be afraid of the ocean, at any depth, would be like a bird afraid of the sky.

So, Kazuya took a peek down to the depths below. All the times he had gone scuba diving, he hadn't really bothered giving the depths a look. He had either been focused on the coral reef or some wreckage he needed to study. Never before had he gone to the middle of the ocean like this, with no intent other than to be in the water.

Deep. Vast. Farther than the eye could see.

For a moment he lost his breath. It was like being hung over the sky.

Even as he thought this, a small school of fish swam far below, emphasizing just how much deeper than he could fathom the darkness was.

His stomach shriveled up against his rib cage as he thought of this girl with the small wrists and warm chocolate eyes being pushed off to live in this cold abyss.

Kazuya took a deep breath of oxygen. The tanks felt like ice against his bare back. He was starting to get cold.

But he turned back to Mai and unstopped his mouth once more.

"If you don't take that step, you'll never know. Remember what I said about that?"

He spoke slowly, but even he couldn't understand all that he said. She nodded, though, as though she comprehended, so he tugged a bit on her wrist.

"Come on. I'll go with you. I promise I won't let anything hurt you and we won't go that deep."

Her eyes went wide, then crumpled in what could have been nigh unto tears. "No, I'm a mermaid, I can't take you down there. What if you get hurt? What if we get stuck? What if we keep going down, down, down—" Her voice pitched higher.

He tugged again. Hard. "Calm down."

"Scary!" she cried. "It's going to eat me!"

He laughed and had to take another puff of air to stop himself. "It's not going to eat you."

But she just wailed like a child. Still smiling, but rolling his eyes, he gave one last tug to pull her arms through the curtains of her own fins. To his faint surprise, she let him, though she ended up tucking in her elbows to her waist. Jamie came down to her other side to take her other wrist, a gentle smile on her face.

"This is what you were made for, Mai. It's the most natural thing in the world."

"No it's not! There's sharks a-a-and poison jellyfish and freaky who knows what—Naru, please take me back!"

"Just trust me, Mai. One step." His voice sounded so ridiculous compared to their clear tones; bubbled and distorted.

She whimpered, but once more let him lead her down. They descended gradually. Though nothing changed in his vision to tell him they were going deeper, the growing pressure on his ear drums and the dropping temperature told him otherwise. When it started getting to the point he could no longer ignore the cold , he stopped and turned back to Mai, who still had yet to open her eyes. He reached to his oxygen, then hesitated. He should have worn his suit. This was too deep. The suit did more than keep him warm. A faint prickling at his arms and made him wondered if it was from cold or the pressure of the water forcing blood from his extremities. But he quickly shook off that inaccurate thought. He'd have to be thousands of feet deep for that, and definitely not in bare swimming trunks. He was letting his nerves get to his head, because the deep waters WERE frightening. But if he didn't first conquer them for Mai-

Then he looked up and lost that thought.

Crystal light, like sunlight through a forest canopy made of glass. Rainbows, streaks of golden pillars, and flashes of silver where fish darted by. So far, and yet not far at all.

How had he never noticed?

Jamie snaked about, her mousy hair following her like a streamer, to put a hand on Mai's shoulder. "Open your eyes, Mai. Look up. See how far we've gone? Come on, sweet. Look how far we've gone, and we're still okay."

Mai's hands trembled. Jamie looked as though she might just be as amused as Naru.

Then the next remarkable thing happened to him. Mai's wrist twisted in his grasp and her warm hand twined her fingers with his. A shock ran through his system, palm against palm, her heat radiating to him like a summer's sun in that chilly, deep water.

She opened one eye, bit her lip, and looked up. What she saw made her drop her other hand from her chest.

"Oh, wow."

After a minute, she looked down, then squeaked and closed them again.

"Okay, I see it, I'm deep, can we go back now?"

"Are you less afraid?"

"I-I guess, but Naru feels like ice, he's going to freeze!"

Jamie nodded and looked to him. "Take it slow, right? The bends and all that."

He nodded and adjusted his hand to have a better hold on Mai. They had just risen to the next level (Mai asking Jamie what she had meant by 'the bends'), when the mermaids abruptly fell silent. He was just about to take off his regulator to ask when he heard it. Piercing. Mournful. Heart breakingly beautiful.

He had heard it once before, but then he had lost his mind. Yet even as he listened, heart hammering, terrified any moment he'd be drowned, his senses remained with him to bring the revelation to his forethoughts.

There was a mermaid in these waters.

Jamie bolted.

"Wait!" Mai cried, and she moved as though to follow after her, but then she felt his weight, looked back at him, and then up to where the belly of the yacht waited. By the time she looked back Jamie had vanished, and the song of the other mermaid had grown louder.

It was then Kazuya started to feel uneasy. He have lost his senses by now. He should be tearing off anything that connected him to the world above and drunk on the feel of water rushing into his lungs and belly.

There wasn't that far left above them. They hadn't gone down that deep after all. Surely, if it was a mermaid, Jamie would come back for Mai. But what if…

He popped off his oxygen. "Mai, keep going. I'll squeeze you for a stop."

She did so, looking as disconcerted as he felt, when a streak of black shot across her path. She gave a cry of alarm just as the black line exploded into a hundred leg spider which wrapped her in its tendrils. At the last moment she let go of his hand. The weight of his oxygen was just enough to sink him the bare inch for the net to miss him.

The mermaid song stopped, replaced by the putter of underwater motors. Orange capsules powering propellers brought along scuba diver after scuba diver from the murky water, all mirror images of the rubber person who had always led Mai to her tank. A dozen of opaque goggles, rubber arms, and bare, ultra white hands, emerging like monsters from a sea-green fog.

Mai bit down on the net, eyes bright with fear as she tried using her teeth to cut herself free. Kazuya found himself letting go of his regulator with a shout to tear at the net as well. Rubber arms clamped about him like pincers, and when he shook them off with a well aimed wrist twist, two more pairs took its place. They tugged him away and forced the regulator back into his mouth just as he took a great heave for air.

His guts fumed at the wide chocolate eyes watching him being pulled away. Her gossamer fins struggled to keep her upright in the confines of the net.

"Naru!"

One of the orange propellers brought another occupied net dangling in its wake, where a green mermaid flailed about. No sooner had she come into view when she froze and broke into angry, eerie mersong.

There it was. The familiar sense of euphoria. The lighter than air buzz. The suffocating feel of oxygen pressing out in his body.

But even as he fought to respond to the call of the song, his delirious mind registered that he was the only one. The arms on him remained still. Mai still looked beautiful. He wanted just to breathe—to breathe the same water she did.

The mersong stopped like a snap. A scuba diver hovered in the water besides Jamie, a knife gleaming in the once crystalline light from above. Her head hung at an odd angle, her mousy hair hiding her expression, and a blur of red curling from beneath her neck.

All euphoria vanished.

There came a familiar crackle as an underwater speaker turned on. This time it wasn't Dr. Tim, but his ex captain, Charles. How nice. So neither of them would have to deal with a stranger, then.

"Sing and you get the same as her. Not that it will do you any good, but we need to start somewhere in teaching you obedience."

Of course. Their ears were plugged, not by beeswax, as Odysseus's men, but with ear buds. With such a large group, they had to communicate with one another through the water, not having the voice of a mermaid. Their microphones would be deep in their regulators, safe from the song of a mermaid.

How convenient. For Kazuya, that was.

They really were idiots.


	31. Someone Needs to Drown

**I hate advertisement, networking, sales, and beets.**

Chapter 30

 _"_ _I sat upon a promontory,  
And heard a mermaid, on a dolphin's back,  
Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath,  
That the rude sea grew civil at her song;  
And certain stars shot madly from their spheres,  
To hear the sea-maid's music."  
\- William Shakespeare _

Something changed in Mai when she saw Jamie go limp as seaweed. The blood looked too bright to be real, diluted in seawater as it was.

And then the scent hit her nose. Rusty, metallic, and clinging to the roof of her mouth which each breath till she could taste it.

The bottomless deep reached for her, swallowing her, even though the arms of the scuba divers never moved. She heard the words, registered them, registered the command for obedience, but it didn't reach her. She could only tap her tongue on the roof of her mouth. Blood. Children. Dreams. Jamie had been excited. They were just going to go for a swim. It was to help them heal, help them move on.

Somewhere beyond the orange, pill shaped propeller that held up Jamie beneath its belly, Mai thought she could see a jellyfish. Her mother and her would hang over the dock and watch them float in with the tide. Beneath had been barnacles and glimmering fish. Yet, somehow, they had still preferred their river in the desert. Oh yeah, that's where her mother's bellybutton pebbles had been. How could Mai have forgotten? It had been somewhere dry and hot, like warm metal flush up against your skin.

The depths were getting deeper and deeper. She couldn't see that beautiful crystal surface anymore. She was going to be crushed by the cold, the depth, the whole weight of the ocean on her lungs. She'd drown.

"Mai!"

His voice, unmade for the water, sounded tiny amidst all the ocean noise. But she heard him. And she turned to him.

Naru had one of the rubber men in a head lock, his regulator held far away from his face. Naru's own mouthpiece floated somewhere by his ear.

"Sing!"

He looked so intense, with his goggles lost from the struggle and his teeth bared, that she opened her mouth without question.

No words came to her mind, so only sound came out. It was the way of singing as Jamie had taught her, without the need for melody, all harmony, and far reaching. As before her throat didn't close up, and though the noise was hauntingly beautiful, to Mai it seemed more of a screech—because she was drowning. She had to be. No matter how well her gills worked.

As though to a dance, all the rubber monsters jerked. Half of them raised their arms as though to tear off their rubber hoods, which held whatever had plugged their ears from Jamie, but they hesitated. Then, as one, they started tearing off their goggles, suits, masks, regulators—they pushed aside the propellers, violently fighting against anything that tied them to the world of harsh air and land.

But Mai's eyes were on Naru, whose face turned up in euphoria as it had in the tank, a single, large globe of air leaving him.

Her heart stopped.

But she kept singing in that wild holler as she reached into her bra, where an old, sharpened seashell rested, and hacked at the net. She learned from experience, having been caught in nets before.

The man Naru hung to slipped from his grip as they both dropped down into the depths, the last of his breath dripping up from his mouth. Naru's lashes looked like black fans against his white skin as his eyes rolled up into the back of his head.

Mai wrapped her arms tight around his chest.

Now, up to the surface, away from the mouth of the deep. Up up, to the crystal light. Naru's weight tugged at her, dying to be sucked away into the ocean's mouth. She didn't bother to look back at the others, but she knew they would be stripped naked and pale by her song.

Up—hurry—up, up, _up!_

Mai rocketed out the water. At the last moment she snapped out a hand and caught the edge of the yacht's deck.

"Lin!" she screamed.

He was there in a second, hauling first Naru and then her onto the deck. As she coughed and tried to remember how to breathe air instead of water, Lin pounded on Naru's chest. Water leaked out from his open mouth. After a moment Lin pinched his nose and breathed into his mouth before pulling back and pounding more water out.

When a ragged suck of air came from Naru, Mai burst into tearless sobs.

The scientist coughed and rolled to his side to retch water from his lungs. Through her own gasps she told Lin of the men below, told him he had to go get Jamie, told him she had sung and sung and—

"I can't."

But he had to. He had to get Jamie, save her, save those men—she didn't want to be a murderer.

"You defended yourself. I have to get us away from here. Watch him."

It was probably the most words she had ever heard out of the tall assistant. Before she could find the words she needed to make Lin go down there and get Jamie—save her, maybe, she couldn't—the blood—

Lin had already left, leaving her with a wheezing Naru still fighting to expel every bit of water from his body.

"Damn," he breathed. "Aw, damn."

And at that, Naru passed out, leaving Mai beached on the hot deck of the yacht that soon rumbled to life. She could just see the water they were leaving behind, disturbed by the pound of the motor.

Not a single head came up. Just blue water and white surf.


	32. If it Ain't Love

**As a thank you to all the great friends I made while writing this story...another chapter...and the end.**

Chapter 31

 _"_ _John Smith, famous for his legendary encounter with his Powhaten rescuer, Pocahontas, claimed in 1614 that he saw a fish-tailed mermaid with round eyes, a finely shaped nose, well-formed ears and long green hair. The creature, he said, was "by no means unattractive." –American Museum of Natural History_

He woke up in pain. He ached all over, especially in his joints, and his head throbbed like a sadist had got stuck in there with a hammer and nothing to do. His eyes watered even as he propped them open to see the slightly yellowed popcorn ceiling of his bedroom. He could hear the engine. They were moving. The clock ticking away on the wall beside him said six twenty. Dinner time. Ugh, forget it.

"Lin?" he croaked.

Instantly, as though he had teleported, Lin appeared out of the corner of Kazuya's eye and leaned over him.

"How are you feeling?"

"Is this how almost drowning is supposed to feel?"

"No. She brought you up too fast."

Kazuya groaned. "The bends."

"Best you stay there. Don't want to complicate it."

"Don't worry, I'm—" he stopped, suddenly alarmed. "Where's Mai?"

"In her room."

"Is she okay? Is she hurt?"

Lin stopped him as Kazuya moved to sit up. "Not a scratch."

"But is she upset? Stupid, of course she is—have you kept her warm? Can you help me get to her? Have you—"

"Stay put," said Lin, forcibly pushing him down now. "Trust me with her. You need to let your body stabilize."

"Can't it stabilize with her?" The moment he said it he realized how it must sound and cringe at the tiny smile on Lin's face. "I mean, scratch that, I didn't say that. Stop smiling and get out, forget I said anything."

But he didn't stop smiling, and Kazuya had to resist the urge to throw something at his retreating back. The idea of forcing his enflamed elbow or shoulder to do the action, however, was more than enough to discourage the idea.

Moments later, however, the floorboards creaked with a much smaller weight and he turned his head to see Mai in the open doorway, framed by the blue behind her and dressed in one of his dress shirts and shorts. The sight made him ache in whole new places.

She didn't look at him as she came and sat on his bedside.

"Not going to die, are you?" she said dryly.

"Not likely. We weren't that far down to begin with."

Her fingers went up to play with a strand of her hair. "I'm pretty pathetic, huh? A mermaid afraid of deep water."

"You're a girl too. A land lover."

She snorted lightly. "How very genius of you to say."

But then they fell quiet. Mai kept her face turned away, her fingers working on the strand of hair, and Kazuya tried to twist something out of his throbbing brain to say.

But the silence stretched on till it became comfortable. At one point Mai lifted up her legs and folded them on the bed to be more comfortable, and Kazuya let his sore sea abused eyes close. At least he could smile at the memory of how surprised that idiotic man had been when Kazuya broke his hold and twisted his arms about his head.

It hit him like a block of ice. All those men…he had told Mai to sing, and she had been conscious the whole time. It was possible—but he had to know.

"Did any of them surface?" he asked.

"No."

He breathed. That made his life easier. And yet, it didn't. They all drowned at sea, there could be no way the Triple A could pin that on him or Mai, and yet you never knew. Murder always made things messy.

But was that what it was? Murder? No. It had been self defense. They would have taken his Mai away to that awful place, tortured her, and forced who knows what else on her. He couldn't let that happen.

It took him a moment to realize the warmth against his leg where Mai sat was trembling. Ignoring the rush of black that fluttered before his eyes, he sat up and reached for her.

"Mai?"

"I killed them, didn't I?"

There was the cold. He had hurt her. Why was he surprised? It was the nature of being about him when one was especially sensitive, though this had nothing to do with sensitivity. He had to stop her before she got too far.

"Stop. You did nothing wrong, at all. You were protecting yourself, you had just seen your friend killed in front of your eyes. If anyone is at fault besides them, it's me. I told you to. Don't you dare feel guilty."

She hunched her head down beneath her shoulders. A familiar pain twisted in his chest, the same pain that had moved him through the too-white glass halls of the Triple A. He reached for her and brought her to him, despite his heavy, protesting joints and muscles.

No sooner did she get settled against his chest, with her skin and scale legs nestled between his, when she started to sob; great, choking gasps.

And he found he didn't care that he didn't have a clue what to do. He didn't care if he royally screwed up and just made it worse, and he didn't care if she was being weak, whiney, or anything. He didn't even care why she was this way. He pressed her hard to him, wrapped as much as he could around her, and buried his screwed up face against her hair, because, for some reason, the sound of her despair made his own throat tighten up. Her aching made him ache. Her troubled breathing made his own lungs go stiff. He hadn't known Jamie. He was perfectly happy all those scuba bastards were dead on the bottom of the ocean. He even found a bit of pleasure thinking about sharks nibbling on their stupid faces for ever threatening him or Mai.

But his eyes burned with tears. Because his Mai, his poor, beautiful Mai, hadn't deserved any of this and had only ever done the best she could. Because he knew she wasn't just crying for Jamie and the dozen or so men she had sung to their depths, but she cried for the past month in captivity, the torture, how ashamed she felt at her own fear of the ocean, her lost family, having nowhere to go, and even, to some extent, for him and his own suffering.

Yes, he somehow knew she cried for him.

And that made him pull back and kiss her full on the mouth. When she gave a little gasp of surprise, his lips followed her, letting a bit of her taste enter between their parted mouths. She tasted of salt. But beneath the salt was something sweet, something like chocolate and spice.

Without giving her time to respond, he pulled away, his thoughts whirring despite the pain. "Come back to Britain with me."

"Wh-what?"

"Diplomatic immunity. They can't come get you or pin and fake crimes if you're in another country, especially if you're a citizen."

"Citizen?"

He was going too fast, said a warning voice, but he pushed on, breathless, heart racing. "My parents have a house by the ocean. It's chilly, but you can swim whenever you like, I'll let them know what's going on and you can work with me—I'll let you tell me what you'd like to do to save the others. I can't do it myself, but I can find the people who do, and I'll keep you safe. You'll have a home-"

He needed to slow down. He needed to stop. But his head was spinning and his heart was pounding wildly. He felt drunk, and her taste flooded his senses. Chocolate and spice. Was this what it was like to lose control? To be taken over by emotions?

Thank God she stopped his mouth for him with a hand.

"What are you saying? Do the bends affect your brain? Naru, do you even like me?"

Somehow, that idiotic nickname of hers for him gave him what he needed to wake up a bit. "Call me Kazuya." Damn it, he still sounded, dare he say it, husky—or desperate.

"I'll call you whatever I damn please."

"Naru's just insulting!"

"Then stop being such a narcissist and we'll talk." The smile she gave him was sad and watery. "Can't you see going with you to Britain might not be any different from the Triple A? I don't really have a choice. You can take me wherever you like, because I have nowhere to go. I'm a pathetic excuse for a mermaid after all. Did you know Jamie lived all those days on her own by eating raw clams and oysters? I'd probably just die."

The comparison between him and those bastards that had just made her live through hell rubbed him raw and he pulled down roughly on her hands. It took a bit of his old self-control to not bare his teeth at her and growl.

"I'm giving you a choice. If you don't want to go with me, I'll help you find wherever you do want to go. I won't leave you behind, I won't leave you powerless. Can you really hear that and ask if I even like you? Are you that dense?"

"When people are in intense situations," she said softly. "They can misinterpreted those intense emotions for love."

Hadn't he told himself that just a few weeks ago? And when had their positions been switched? She was suppose to be the emotional crazy wreck and he the logical one.

Screw it.

He leveled his famous glare that he saved to shut up particularly annoying co-workers on her. As desired, she shrank.

"I won't beg." He said harshly. "I'm sticking with you. I will make you happy; I can't stand for you to be otherwise. If that isn't love, than I will make it be."

And because she was looking up at him, all wide-eyed with her glistening pink lips parted in surprised, he slipped a hand behind her head and tasted of her until he felt her responding back in turn with those delicate fingers twisting up against his scalp.

 **Author's Note: I was considering writing an epilogue, but then I realized that I wrote this story with a sequel in mind, so an epilogue would be redundant. I'm not sure I'll do the sequel. Maybe I'll just leave it hanging here-I mean, they are sort of together, though I cut off the part where Mai freaks out on him and runs for it, which, frankly, is more in character for her, especially with how pushy Naru is.**

 **But whatev. Leave a review letting me know what you think of this rough draft of my story and whether or not a sequel is a must have or a meh.**


	33. Sequel Bait--They Aren't Safe Yet

**Hey ya'll! Just a reminder that the sequel, "The Mermaid and Her Boy" is up and about to be finished! To help wet your appetite enough to go hunt it down, I've included this revised sneak peek.**

"Marco."

"Polo."

"Marco!"

"Polo—Oy!"

Kazuya closed his eyes to the glow of his laptop and took a deep breath through his nostrils. He tried to focus on the smell of earl grey tea, the hum of the CPU, the rock of the boat against the waves.

"Come here Marco Marco, your pretty face better not be under the water."

"Yasu, polo."

"I said two Marcos—three!"

"Polo."

"Oh, come on, don't be like—AH HA!"

A wild splash, a loud grown man's yip, and then boisterous laughter.

From across the table came a loud, annoyed snort.

"You'd think they were children," said Ayako, and even with his eyes closed Kazuya could see her flipping back her red hair for the fifth time since she had sat down across from him. Why didn't the idiot just tie it up if it kept getting in her way? "I swear that Yasu swings in a different direction. Any chance I could look through your room for some nail polish? If I keep working with the ropes like this I'm going to have potato chips instead of nails."

Kazuya took a deep inhale. Lin needed this crew. They couldn't risk finding another. It was a miracle they had found one at all. Remember that.

After refocusing on his happy things, he opened up his eyes and went back to where he had been in his article.

- _the baby girl was born alive, but died an hour afterwards. Doctors recorded the time of death and the reasoning being 'severe sireneomelia.' Though I searched diligently for the mother to request permission for the release of the infant's body for my collection, she was nowhere to be found, and the doctors could tell me little as to what had happened to the body. Nevertheless, I couldn't help but think how curious it was that in all recorded cases of sireneomelia, the patients are female._

Another clue, but not a helpful one. He already knew humans could sire mermaid with one of the merfolk, but that wouldn't help him find Mai. Even so, he summarized the story in his notebook along with a reference. Passing down the article, he moved on to find the next. Maybe he had to think outside of mermaids and the Bermuda Triangle. Perhaps the coral reefs of the Bahamas? The Triangle did bottom out there. Hadn't there been natives on the Bahamas when Columbus had come through? Yes, there had, that should help.

"Marco." Yasu pitched his voice up high and girly.

"Polo."

"Marco, come to me, my angel of music!"

"…Polo."

A swish of hair across a denim vest. "What is he trying to do? I can't believe Takigawa can stand that little runt. Did you hear my question about the nail polish?"

Kazuya raised his eyebrows at her from over the laptop. "No." Back to his search. What was that tribe's name again? He should know this. He could remember a myth from them concerning the blue holes, but merfolk couldn't hide in those. Nothing could, as after a dozen feet or so the water became devoid of oxygen and life. Still salt water could do that.

Ayako let out a loud, weary sigh. "That sucks. Isn't there something fun to do on here?"

"Marco Marco Marco Marco!"

"Polo."

"Aw, you said my name last time. Come on, Takigawa."

"Polo."

"Oh Marco, wherefore art thou Marco!"

Ayako's boots squeaked as she shifted her legs. "Hey, Kazuya, isn't there—"

He snapped his laptop closed. Prickles of heat ran up and down his neck and arms. It took all his self control not to slam the kitchen door behind him as he left, but the lot questioned him enough because of his age without him acting it.

From the waters, Takigawa caught sight of him stomping up the steps to the Captain's quarters.

"Time to board yet, Cap?"

But Kazuya ignored him and made sure to lock the door behind him. Lin would take care of it once he was done switching beacon codes for the ship in order to disguise its identity.

Though he had intended to work up here instead (why he hadn't started up here in the beginning was because the cabin was a heat trap, A/C or no), but once he sat at the fold out metal desk from the wall and started it up, he found himself staring at the screen. Like it had several times throughout the night, his mind seized up and his fingers went cold. He tried taking several deep breaths, hoping it would work as it had before in bringing him back, but a rock like constriction filled his lungs.

He didn't even know why he was so upset. Sure idiots got on his nerves, but he'd made it through college just fine. Those three he could have ignored easily. But for some reason, the laughing, the ridiculousness of it all, the unprofessionalism—

He pushed off from the desk and dug the balls of his hands to his eyes. They were shaking. He had never trembled so much in his life as he had the past week. What had Mai done to him?

Mai…

Laughter from outside leaked through the door and he had to restrain the urge to open the door and scream at them. That alone frightened him, as the last time he had wanted to do that was when he was five. What was wrong with him?

But forget that, what was he doing? Risking the lives of strangers to save a girl who was probably just fine? With her own kind, even? Going through this expense—going to this extreme—he shouldn't be doing this, but he had to. He tried to remind himself of the challenge, excuse it as research and groundbreaking, but the flat freeze of his innards powered his need to yell until the world righted itself.

Because those idiots shouldn't be laughing. They shouldn't be complaining about—about nail polish or rules of some moronic children's game, they should have their noses in books, picking up facts, scrambling just as desperately as he to find her, his Mai, his needle in the haystack. It was so much more vastly important, and their lighthearted nature sounded as out of place on his boat as it would at a funeral.

Yes. Yes, that's why it annoyed him. But that was ridiculous. They didn't know Mai, nor had he expressed any of his feelings for her, and never would. No one should look into his heart and see just how much of a love-sodden pathetic fool he was. No one should touch this shameful weakness of his. They'd tell him to forget her anyways, anyone would. Mermaids belonged in the sea, and she hadn't even given him a sign that she felt anything more than friendship for him, if that.

And when the first storm came, when the first crew member fell overboard, what would be his excuse then?

A memory of a glittering Mai in the waves, hair in curls about her cheeks, rose and was shoved away. Yet that brief second of contact was enough to weaken his knees and push him back into the flimsy metal folding chair.

Pathetic. Absolutely pathetic.

Something clicked.

"Move and I shoot."


	34. Epilogue 2: Aquaphobe

Aquaphobe

By LoweFantasy

A Scientist and His Fish promotional oneshot

 **Author's Intro/Gift:**

 **Since it's lame to give you all an announcement without a story update, I offer you this little oneshot of how Mai the Mermaid's parents met!**

 **Why the announcement? Today I release the first book in a series of inexpensive Kindle books that I've started to help put food on the table LITERALLY, as in I'm having a hard time paying for food and the basics. If you can, please drop by and pick up a copy of it.**

 **It's titled "Wendy" and you can find it on Amazon under the pen name T.S. Lowe. I've put a synopsis at the end of this chapter.**

 **Now I'll get out of your way...**

 _18 Years Ago_

Her father had meant it as a way for them to bond and had planned it all before she had even gotten there. He hadn't bothered to mention it either, as he thought it a fun surprise.

She felt no sympathy whatsoever in telling him, point blank, that she thought sailing along the coast of the Mediterranean was a horrible idea. Why? Because she had aquaphobia. Lived her whole life smack dab in the middle of the desert quite happily, thank you.

His face had fallen. But he picked up his earlier exuberance quickly enough by saying it was an excellent opportunity to get over that phobia. He said he had read somewhere that phobias were fed by avoidance, and the only way to get over them was through exposure.

To say that set them off at a rocky start was an understatement.

Course, if she had been with her mom, she would have just thrown up a huge stink. The moment she tried to pick a proper fight with her sire, on the other hand, she found him not only irritatingly cool and bubbly, but a giant, squishy cloud of conflict avoidance. He just didn't fight, even if it meant not saying anything. He did what he liked no matter what anyone else thought.

Why he hadn't been a part of her life from the start suddenly made sense.

And since his much beloved sailboat happened to be for a, well, for a mostly single man who probably had a spray of forgotten children about the States, there was hardly any room for Marie to have a proper sulk without him trying to start a conversation with her. Freaking chatterbox couldn't shut up, and it wasn't like he was easy to talk to either. He'd take whatever you gave him and spin it in to whatever he was interested in hearing himself prattle on about.

Thus, she found herself at the back of the boat late one night, her arms and legs hanging over and through the railing, despite her mind-numbing fear of the deep. It was the darkness that made it bearable, along with her unspent displeasure at her situation.

She hated water. She hated boats. And now she hated her father.

"'Course Mama dear won't do anything about it," she seethed at the black water, imagining she mocked its attempts to reach her feet and suck her down to the bottom. "She'll just wrap it up to me being some angsty teenager, but I don't see some sixty year old doing any better surrounded by everything they hate and fear, you know why? Because when you're sixty, you do whatever you damn please."

An extra special wave decided to pop up then and smacked the bottom of her foot. She scrabbled back, heart pounding, already knotted stomach curling up to her throat.

It took her five minutes of telling herself to relax and go to her happy place before she could breathe normally. And it infuriated her even more.

"Look at me!" she hissed to the night sky. "Panicking because it licks my foot, maybe this trip would be good for me. Freaking pansy!"

And since rage seemed to be making a nice little masochist out of her, she very proudly scouted her butt back to the railing, though she didn't hang her feet out this time.

"Okay, I need to calm down or, knowing my luck, I'll probably barf." She closed her eyes and breathed hard through her nose. "Come on. Be mature. At least enough to sleep."

Ugh. Sleep. Like she could sleep with all that damn rocking _death_ rolling about her. Even as she closed her gritty eyes she could feel the last two days burning through her eyelids like the sun.

Hate hate hate hate HAAAATE! SO much broiling, seething loathing hatred.

And it was making her sick. She knew it. She could feel it in her gut, in her stuffed, wind battered bare legs and arms. She could feel it in the way her thoughts bounced and tumbled into each other.

So she did what she always did to comfort herself.

She sang.

At first it was just nonsense scales and lip buzzes to warm herself. Then she went through the first lines of several songs, tasting the melodies on her tongue until she gradually fell into the one that soothed the most. As she sang, she pushed herself to gradually push out a foot. It was just a little water. The sky was clear, not a storm in sight, so it was calm waters at that.

When another spray of sea nipped the sole of her foot, she clutched hard to the railing and kept singing. If she was lucky, her father would stay inside the cabin and not come out to sing himself.

Halfway through the second song, in the brief pause between verses, a voice spoke out from the darkness.

"Hello."

She yipped and almost rolled back into the cabin windows as she let go of the railing.

That was not her father's voice.

"Wait! Don't be afraid, I just wanted to ask something."

"Oh, like I have a choice on whether to be afraid or not." But it did sound human enough. Not like a ghost or something that wanted to eat her. It actually kind of had an accent, a rather pleasant one, with buzzing 'r's. Nonetheless, she found something else on the boat to hold onto rather than the railing.

"Will you come back? I don't want to wake up anyone. There's more than one of you up there, right?" A he. Definitely a he.

She squinted out into the darkness. "Where are you?"

"Down here. In the water."

Oh lord, the ocean was talking back now. "T-that isn't reassuring."

"Then, um, would you mind, if you can, if you like, share some food? I…I haven't been, um…"

Wait, she'd heard these stories before, right? Random voice from the darkness asks for food. You give them food and then they grant you wishes or come bail you out when you're about to be screwed over? Or, wait, did they become feral monsters that multiplied with water? Wait, those were Gremlins. Gremlins couldn't be in the ocean.

Just a little more curious now than scared, she said, "If I get you food, you won't sink our boat or anything, okay?"

"Goodness, why would I do that?"

…Who said goodness anymore? Besides grandmas, that is.

"Give me a minute."

Back in the cabin her father was where she had left him: curled up around his laptop near the front, where the curved bench of the boat made a little couch.

"Is it alright if I have dinner now?" she asked.

"Not at all," he said. "Good to hear your feeling better."

"Is it okay if I eat it outside?"

He took a drink of his tea and gestured towards the door to show she was welcome to it.

Back up on deck, she eased tentively towards the rail, her little Tupperware of Tuna Helper in hand.

"I got food?" she said, more quietly than before.

"Thank you!" cried the voice.

She snapped her head to the right, squinting out into what little of the ocean she could see from the gaslight inside and the stars above. Something made its way towards her. As the boat dipped down, a very human shoulder and arm reached up through a patch of light to the Tupperware. The boat eased up and the arm and shoulder fell out of sight. She thought she could make out the outline of a head and another shoulder as well.

A weird thought popped up in the back of her mind. That would be funny if it were true.

"What's this?" he asked.

"Just some Tuna Helper. You know, fish, noodles, creamy stuff. Want me to get you a fork?"

"Um…" A pop of the Tupperware opening. "Oh, got it. Oh, uh, no fork. I can handle this. It smells really good, thank you."

"You're welcome? Hey, uh, how did you get out here? Is your boat near here or something?"

"Give me a moment."

She heard no slurping sounds over the constant hush of the ocean, but she assumed he wanted to eat something first, so she looked about the horizon as she waited. She rarely looked at it, as it reminded her just how far the water went all around her. The first time she had seen it, she'd vomited right then and there. But, in the night, as it was with the waves, it was easier, probably because she could imagine whatever she wanted just hidden beyond the darkness. She could even pretend the water was a mirror when the stars came out all bright like this.

But that's all she saw. Stars. No lights from any other boats. And to have the first thing he asked of her be food…

"Here's your container back." The figure moved closer to the light and held up the Tupperware to her.

As she reached down to retrieve it, the boat rocked down towards her, pushing the light from the cabin past his shoulder to the rest of him. He had coppery hair without a trace of freckles on pale, moonlight like skin (she'd never met a redhead before that didn't have freckles), and a nice, soft, open face, the kind Hollywood always used when they needed an actor who could play a part younger than them.

And his arm had a fin on it.

The Tupperware fell.

"Whoops. Sorry." He caught it on a ride away wave and lifted it up to her again, this time with a smile just as soft as his boyish features.

Her hand caught it, but nearly dropped it again. "Are you a merman?"

He blanched, and the waves took the boat's light away.

For a brief moment, she feared she had scared him away with her trademark bluntness. But as the boat rocked back and the light came back down to the water on her side, he was still there, though a bit further away than before. Even so, she could still see the trepidation in his wide, dark eyes.

"I'm not going to hurt you," she said, wondering if the casual laugh she had tried to put into the words sounded more hysterical than comforting.

"Don't tell him," he said, and she nearly didn't hear him beneath the waves.

"Come back, I can't hear you."

"Please don't tell him," he repeated, coming closer as she asked, fading into darkness and back into sight again with the jumping of the light. "The other one on your boat."

She managed a snort. "I'd be more afraid of him talking you to death than doing you any actual harm. What, are you afraid we'll harpoon you and post you up for National Geographic?"

Rather than make him smile, as she hoped, his eyes only widened further and his mouth dropped.

" _You do that now?!_ " His voice had jumped an octave.

"Oh my god, it was a joke! Nobody does that, mermaids don't exist. At least…" she squinted as he dropped into shadow again. "This is a dream, huh?"

"Let's go with that," he said, and when the light came down again, she was glad to see he looked relieved. "So, if I did exist, what would you say?"

"What the crap are you doing here? I mean, by my boat, in the middle of the night. Though I guess that wouldn't really matter in a dream."

"I wouldn't think so. Dreams rarely care about logic and would probably tell you something silly."

"Like that you're from Atlantis—are you from Atlantis?"

He gave a noise she didn't recognize, but thought could be a snort as his next words were, "Please, that's a month's swim away. No, I'm from, well…that's a secret."

She smiled. "You go saying that I'll just get interested."

"Then I'll ask a question." He hesitated. "Do…do many humans sing like you?"

She felt a little warmth on the back of her neck. "Oh, so you heard that? Did it serenade to you many foody thoughts?"

The light came down on his wry smile. "Most of our kind have the ability to sing, and quite effectively. I heard some humans could, but not very well. You didn't sound much different from the, uh, some of the women back home."

The warmth spread, but she found herself smiling stupidly. "Is that a compliment, Mr. Merman?"

"You still haven't answered my question. And it's Roan."

She stopped, surprised. "Huh."

"What?"

"Nothing, that's just a really normal name for a merman. I thought it would be more like, I don't know," she made a sad attempt at a dolphin's cackle.

He exploded into loud, barking laughter. It bounced back to her off the cabin walls.

It stopped abruptly when the door to the cabin clacked open.

"Marie? Was that you?"

She tried to look nonchalant on the railing, even as she suddenly noted how wet her feet had become. How had she not notice?

"Who else could it be?"

He blinked at her for a minute. Then shrugged.

"Guess I haven't heard you laugh before," he said, more than a little awkward. Probably didn't want to mention that it had sounded awfully like a man's laughter. "If you're going to hang out here much longer, could you wear a life jacket? I thought you were afraid of the water."

"Exposure therapy, Dad. I live life on the edge." But since he was actually holding one outside the door, she sighed, and got up enough to snatch it from his hand. "Thanks."

"No problem. I've got a fun movie on my laptop, wanna watch it with me?"

"Maybe." And just in case he heard anything else funny, or already had. "Me and the ocean are having a heart to heart."

He did look pleased at that. He even gave her a really wide, toothy smile that almost made her feel guilty for lying…almost.

The moment he turned his head away to head back stairs, she snapped her attention back to the water. When the light showed nothing but black, empty waves, she wilted and pulled her wet feet back into the safe dryness of the boat.

"You're afraid of the water?"

Her heart nearly crashed its way into her cranium with joy. "You're still here!" She moved to snap on her life jacket.

"Course. I don't exist, right? And you haven't answered my question, I'm really curious."

"The singing thing?"

"Yes."

She happily stuck her feet out once more and barely shivered at the brush of sea spray. "I don't know what you would count as 'many.' I'm in the top choir at my school, if that means anything."

"Top choir? Does that mean you're good?"

"The best in my school."

"How many are in your school?"

The heat had returned and moved up to her ears. "Funny things you're curious about. I guess there's about three thousand or so. It's kind of big."

The light came down, but she barely caught sight of him to her right, hiding more near the boat, yet—a little shock went up her spine—closer to her. Nearly in touching distance of her leg, even.

Would he pull her in?

"So I guess not many, then, if you're the top out of three thousand."

"Not everyone sings, nor sings well, no, I guess. Rather unfair of you to make me sound like I'm bragging like that, though."

"I beg your pardon."

She chuckled. "Mermen talk so old world."

"Is that bad?"

Now that she knew where he was, she could see his eyes glittering up at her in the dark. A cold sweat prickled up under her arms and along her brow.

"No."

A pause passed through them, the longest one yet. The thought passed through her mind that she was like her father after all. Probably way too chatty.

She pulled her legs in.

The glittering eyes shifted as his head cocked to the side. "What's wrong?"

Her mouth had gone a little dry. "You're…I just…could you go back a little bit?"

"Did I do something to scare you?" he said, but he did back off a bit, even back into where the light could touch him. His head tilted again, this time in thought. "Is it because you are afraid of the water?"

She tried to smile sheepishly, but couldn't help but be aware of the fact that she hadn't really eaten all day and her twisted stomach hadn't exactly thanked her for it. "More like terrified."

There was an ocean filled silence that she thought could be stunned. After all, it would be like a merman telling her he was terrified of air—if mermen could drown in air, that is. Still, she expected him to ask her why, or even to go on to explain, as her mom among many others over her life had done, that she really didn't have to be so afraid, or even that being afraid was worse than not knowing how to swim.

But when she saw his face again, it was soft. Sympathetic, even.

"Smart fear," he said. "I'm sorry your father has brought you out here."

That made her stare.

At her surprise, he moved just a little bit closer again. "There are many dangers in the ocean, even for someone like me who cannot drown. I can't imagine what dangers there would be for someone who could."

She hugged her head to the top of the railing and almost whispered, "What kind of dangers?"

"Well, out here in open water, the murky depths could be hiding anything," he said. "Sharks, I believe you call them. Big thing, rows of teeth, big, big mouth. It's hunting tactic is to stay low enough that its dark back is disguised in the depths. Then, it shoots up—" he popped his hand out of the water, and Marie got another glance of the long fin on his forearm. "Right into its prey. So fast, you have no warning."

She shivered with delightful horror, suddenly that much fonder of the safety of her boat.

Seemingly pleased by her reaction, he went on to describe mighty volcanic eruptions that could shoot plumes of boiling water from the hidden deep, poisonous fish that hid themselves in coral reefs, crowded curtains of stinging jellies, poisonous gas that would drown a merman before he realized he was in danger, raging typhoons that could suck entire dolphins into the sky, and many other creatures and things he hadn't the human name for, but which he did his best to describe anyways.

When the lights switched off in the cabin behind her, plunging them into darkness, she could just make out the thinnest line of gray on the horizon. She stifled the millionth yawn of the day and found herself closing her eyes against the railing.

"But I've killed a shark before," she heard in the darkness. "Many shark. I wouldn't let any hurt you. I would keep you out of waters with jellies, and far from the coral reefs. Somewhere with white, shallow waters like glass so nothing can sneak on you. Somewhere on a bright day, no clouds, just warm sun. You could walk on the sand, and if you had to swim, even for a moment, I will swim for you."

"That sounds really nice," she murmured. She thought she could feel the ocean waves on her feet now. They were cold, but the water was surprisingly warm.

"And it would be warm, not like out here."

She hummed at the thought. Her old friend the sun was shining down on her, warming her feet quite nicely. So nice. Warm feet.

Then, strangely, the toes on one of her feet got cold, and she felt something soft and warm flutter across them.

"Marie."

And when she woke up, the sun had risen high and bright in the sky, just like her dreams. She turned to wonder why she had fallen asleep on deck and why the ocean being the first thing she saw didn't send her over the edge into panic mode, even when she could see through the blue of the waves to something of the depths.

But she already knew what was in them.

 **"Wendy" synopsis:**

 _Wendy knows she tends to be a mother hen to her friends. But if she doesn't, who will? Her boys are lost from their parents in more ways then one, especially the mysterious Kolya, who awkwardly befriended them after fleeing the Russian mafia. She almost wishes he hadn't when she finds herself on the end of what must be a one-sided love. After all, why would the cool, handsome, aloof Kolya have any interest in a nagging she-man like her?_

 _But when Kolya's past catches up with them, getting rid of an unwanted crush will be the last thing on Wendy's mind._

 **You get a book and I get milk. You don't get me milk, and you still get an extra chapter of your favorite story.**


End file.
